The Penn State football scandal and the use of pepper spray by campus police at the University of California, Davis provide the latest evidence why school administrators should not oversee police functions.
Having university presidents in charge of campus police makes about as much sense as having pharmaceutical company CEOs in charge of the Food and Drug Administration. The temptation to protect one’s own interests is far too great.
Time and again, university and college presidents bungle police oversight. In the case of Penn State, the university police placed Penn State public relations ahead of justice when they looked the other way instead of investigating child sexual abuse charges that might taint their powerful cash cow of a football program. At UC Davis, poor training and oversight allowed a thug with a badge to become the poster child for out-of control law enforcement.
Penn State and UC Davis are anything but isolated cases. The misuse of power by university officials is almost routine at colleges and universities across the country. As recently as 2008, University of Iowa officials interfered with a rape investigation which resulted in the dismissal of two officials and raised a legitimate question whether public safety or university prestige took precedence in UI police matters.
The rules governing law and order should not be different on the campus of a college or university than anywhere else. Law enforcement needs to be separated from educational administration once and for all.
Whether a shower stall is located on what some may consider the hallowed ground of a university or at the local community center should make no difference to those investigating and/or prosecuting an alleged child rape. Sadly, all-too-often educators at America’s colleges and universities get away with putting institutional protection above all else.
An elected mayor with ultimate oversight over a police department is accountable to his entire community while a college president is accountable only to a board of directors who are narrowly interested in the health and growth of the school. Many times, the motivations of a mayor and a college president are dramatically different.
There are other reasons to take police functions out of the hands of university administrators. Chief among them are improved training, coordination and budgetary efficiency.
Following a gunman’s rampage at Virginia Tech University that left 33 people dead in 2007, universities, law enforcement agencies, local governments and the public studied what went wrong and how best to manage community response in a time of crisis. The findings: The lack of planning and coordination between law enforcement and public entities resulted in a loss of time and effectiveness during the emergency. First responders need to work together. If campus police need to check with a university president before working with outside law enforcement, bad things are likely to happen.
The Iowa Board of Regents focused on part of the problem with campus police and spent much time debating whether campus security at Iowa’s three universities should carry guns. While it was true that, without weapons, campus police generally had to wait for other law enforcement entities to respond before intervening in certain situations, the Regents and the State of Iowa failed to address how to significantly improve safety, the duplication of effort by multiple agencies and the saving of dollars.
The solution is to move police functions away from university administration and put it in the hands of a better-trained and well coordinated police force.
Public safety in university communities would improve if police were to serve beyond the confines of university property and without the interference of university administrators. Universities could contract with municipal police in the communities where they are located and/or the State of Iowa could at long last gut its ever diminishing State Patrol and replace it with a single, effective state law enforcement entity that would include all university police functions.
Communication, training and coordination would improve under a new statewide force. Problems and successes on one campus would be shared immediately throughout the system. There would be additional significant safety and financial efficiencies to be gained. When university populations decline during the summer and winter holidays, resources could be reallocated appropriately. When a single university hosts a large event or faces a significant threat, resources could be shifted accordingly. In short, Iowa would be better served by one force instead of a State Patrol and three university public safety units.
It does not make financial or, perhaps, common sense to continue to equip, maintain and administer separate bureaucracies at the State Patrol, University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.
Preventing another university cover-up like those at the University of Iowa and Penn State should be enough of a reason to get college administrators out of law enforcement. The efficiency and improved security of a statewide force or turning responsibility over to local police are also compelling reasons to scrap campus security forces.
University presidents should concentrate on education, not deciding on when it is appropriate use pepper spray or allowing an institution’s image to factor into whether or not justice should be pursued.
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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register guest essay and a Des Moines Register blog entry.
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