The first of three finalists looking to fill the vacant slot at the top of the Department of Public Safety was on campus Tuesday, meeting members of the University community.
Douglas L. Tripp, the current DPS director at Milwaukee Area Technical College, emphasized the need for the University of Oregon’s department to improve communication and relationships with the students, faculty and staff while developing a master plan to achieve long-term objectives.
“This department appears to have a leadership vacuum,” he said.
Positively, he said the officers he had met seemed eager to make changes and move in new directions.
The University has been without a permanent director for its Department of Public Safety for more than four years. Former Interim Director Tom Hicks, who had been employed with the University since 1983, resigned from his three-year stint in the temporary position at the end of December 2006. Richard Turkiewicz, a former Director of Public Safety and Police at the University of Central Florida, has held the interim position since March 2007.
Tripp also emphasized the importance of having student involvement in the department and the need to create a “sworn” police force on campus that is capable of carrying firearms. That prospect drew questions of concern and resistance from one of the two students who attended the public meeting.
“Students don’t trust DPS to hire personnel who are qualified to hold firearms, right now,” Tripp said. “They’re very real concerns.”
Tripp holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but said he held a strong attachment to the University of Oregon because of the school’s storied track program. Although Lane Community College offered him the top position for public safety two years ago, Tripp somewhat sheepishly said he had held out for the University because of his own past as a distance runner.
“If I don’t make it (this time), I’m coming right back at you,” he said.
During the public forum Tripp repeatedly returned to the ideal that DPS should make itself a responsive part of the University committed to solving problems through innovative technologies and officer empowerment.
“We are one thread in the fabric of this institution, but we are a thread,” he said. “The departments that isolate themselves and live on an island do the greatest disservice.”
Asked about how to improve the University’s parking shortage and trouble, Tripp said that such problems are difficult to solve and require consistency and forethought.
Assistant Vice President for Administration Brian Smith said the University will be soliciting feedback after the remaining two candidates have visited today and Thursday.
“We want to get as much input from as many groups as possible,” he said.
The best-suited candidate will return to campus within a month to meet with Vice President for Finance and Administration Frances Dyke, who will be making a decision “as soon as possible,” Smith said.
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