By Patrick Donges
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-967343.mp3
North Adams, MA – The announcement came during a Monday meeting of the MCLA Student Government Association that the college is seeking to provide its eight member police force with firearms.
The officers are fully sworn Special Massachusetts State Police, meaning they already have the authority to make arrests, file criminal complaints, and conduct investigations.
When asked why the officers do not currently carry firearms, MCLA Director of Public Safety Joseph Charon said violence on college campuses perpetrated over the past several years has changed the jobs of campus police officers.
"Given the nature of the times and the evolution of crime and the need to keep campus communities safe, transitioning to sworn and armed law enforcement agencies was kind of a logical process and evolution."
Charon cited the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which a lone gunman took 32 lives, and a report released the following year conducted by global risk management and security engineering firm Applied Risk Management for the Massachusetts Department of Education on best practices for campus police forces.
One of the recommendations in that report is that sworn campus police officers be armed and trained in the use of personal or specialized firearms.
MCLA campus police officers already carry handcuffs, expandable batons and pepper spray, and some, including Charon, are used to carrying firearms as they also serve as sworn officers of local municipal police departments.
"We have a duty to act just like every other law enforcement officer in Massachusetts. Within that duty to act, we cannot stand by and watch crime happen before us."
"One of those levels of crime may involve serious bodily harm and or death to either an officer or one of our community members. So this issue is more about positioning campus police officers to have the tools they need to properly fulfill their duty to act."
"The bottom line is that this decision, like any other safety and security decision, could ultimately be measured in lives saved or lost. It just makes prudent sense for MCLA to get in front of this issue, and not wait for something to happen."
Chad Baker, a senior at MCLA, disagrees.
"It's not a very good idea. Everyone on campus is just going to be more nervous as a result of this."
Baker is just one of several students upset with the proposal, according to Student Government Association President and MCLA junior Todd Foy. Foy said there are two main reasons students disagree with the proposal.
"This was just brought to us, literally at the end of the year, when they've had this information at their disposal since last year sometime."
"Many students just don't see the need in this time of budget cuts. They just don't see the need to arm our police; this isn't a dangerous, terrible area."
While admitting said the rationale for arming campus officers is sound, Foy said that the partnership between campus police and North Adams city police has appeared to, during his time on campus, be sufficient in protecting the college community.
"In three years here I have never felt threatened. I have never known anyone to feel threatened. We don't have the level of need here for firearms, I just don't see it, but at the same time, I don't work in public safety."
MCLA Dean of Student Affairs Charlotte Degen said dialogue with students will continue at two public meetings on the proposal scheduled for tomorrow morning and Monday afternoon.
MCLA is one of only three of the state's nine universities that do not have armed sworn police officers. According to Charon another of those institutions, Fitchburg State College, is also in the process of arming their police force.