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"Sometimes it's better to err on the side of public safety than on the side of individual rights." --Rep. Peter Courtney (D-Marion)

This officer isn't with the Eugene Police Department... This officer is from the Office of Public Safety, your campus police force. While OPS is not yet a gun-slinging presence on campus, provisions are being made that would expand the power of every friendly neighborhood security officer...

Senate Bill 504 passed 20-7 last week. Next week the House debates the measure that would effectively make the Oregon State System of Higher Education a law-enforcement agency. [Editor's note: OSSHE is now called the Oregon University System.] Campus security officers on all state campuses would have the ability to stop, interrogate and search students, nonstudents and faculty.

While the bill is being hailed by administrators and campus security, it is not without criticism.

"The American Civil Liberties Union traditionally has strongly opposed the extension of police authority to agencies that are not law-enforcement agencies," said David Fidanque, Executive Director, ACLU Oregon, during his testimony before the State Senate Judiciary Committee.

One high-ranking administrator claims this bill will only legalize what is already practiced, other sources concur.

In 1987, campus security officers were given probable cause arrest authority, meaning if they had a reasonable belief that a person had committed a crime, they could arrest the individual. Campus security officials now claim they are in peril because they do not have the authority to stop, question or frisk suspects.

"When they got probable cause arrest authority, they assumed they had stop and frisk. They believe they're in a precarious situation [without the stop and frisk authority]," said Jane Lesser of the Oregon Student Lobby [Editor's note: OSL is now called the Oregon Student Association.].

Under the current law, if OPS wants to "talk" and you walk away, there is absolutely nothing they can do.

While the bill explicitly states that campus security officers will not be carrying weapons, it does not prevent a future bill from granting this authority. Likewise, there is much concern over the nature of the bill. If set into law, campus security officers will be put into the position of more hostile confrontations with students.

Expanding the role of campus security is gaining the attention of students. President of the College Democrats, Richard Bernstien, feels that it would only take one dangerous situation before campus security officers demand weapons to protect themselves.

Others also believe the expanding role of OPS seems out of place.

"If I have a problem with a building, or something like that, I call campus security. If I'm the victim of a crime, I call the police," said Jason Kropf, a law student who testified against SB 504 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Locking buildings, filing missing bike reports and administering first aid is what OPS does because that is what it is trained to do.

Kropf discussed the training necessary for police officers to become qualified for making proper stops, searches and seizures. Proponents for SB 504, including Carey Drayton, director of OPS and Melinda Grier from the Department of Education, claims that campus security officers only need four more hours of training to be qualified in proper procedures. Kropf stated public officers he talked to said it took them years to be comfortable with the Constitutional implications of stop and search. Kropf was also concerned about the nature of "justice" in a campus setting.

"In a criminal justice setting we have safeguards for a person who is subject to an illegal stop," he said. "But on campus, for a conduct hearing, we have a lower burden of proof and looser rules of evidence. I don't think that students are going to be protected adequately if they are subjected to an illegal stop."

Unlike the other large campuses, the University contracts the local police, the Eugene Police Department, to help out. According to the testimony of Richard Dumars, director of WOSC's [Editor's note: now, Western Oregon University] located in Monmouth. OPS Director Carey Drayton supported the bill by describing the security needs of OHSU, located in Portland.

"They have the unique situation in that they have that hospital. There's a lot of mental cases, gunshot wounds and those types of things," Drayton said. "They've had situations when they need [security] people right away."

"Our problems and situations are unique and different from those at PSU and OHSU," Bernstien said. "It doesn't make sense to have bureaucrats from Portland and Salem telling us how to do public safety at the University."

But Drayton's testimony suggests that the UO needs a stronger campus security force so the certifiably insane and the mortally wounded can be detained for questioning and searched for firearms.

"The biggest impact this will have on people on the campus is the stop and frisk authority," said State Senator Peter Sorenson (D-Eugene). But Drayton believes his officers are expected to already exercise that authority.

"The officers are not being asked to do anything different than they are doing already," Drayton said. So our officers are stopping and searching students without even being trained in proper procedure.

"We have a Eugene Police Department substation paid for by the University and EPD," Sorenson said. "We have more police officers than would be paid for by just the Oregon State System of Higher Education."

Along with EPD officers, the University also has standard campus security officers. But Drayton is critical of the role that EPD can play on campus, and believes OPS officers need more power.

"We don't have the luxury of waiting for an EPD officer to show up," Drayton said. "Their response time is sometimes five minutes at best. Sometimes we're on our own."

The OSL thinks it is odd that Drayton would push this issue so hard. "He's all over this, which I kinda think is incredibly ironic because he has EPD contracted on his campus," Lesser added. "Why does he need more authority?"

But giving more authority to an OPS officer won't make their relationship with the EPD any easier, and the ability to stop and search will not even help campus security officers."

"Operationally, I don't see it as an aid," said Administrative Sergeant Frank Bone of the EPD. Sorenson said there are three different security officers the campus could employ: Rent-a-cops, campus security officers and police officers.

"There's really a big difference in the types of training they receive," Sorenson said. Rent-a-cops take a class, read a few detective magazines and get a badge. Campus security officers attend a four-week program to become qualified to administer first aid and lock doors.

Police officers go to school for eight weeks and then train in the field for six months before they put on their uniform. But now, after adding four more hours to our campus security officers' training, they will be able to do everything that an officer can, except shoot us, and that may be coming soon.

"It seems absurd to spend higher ed dollars to further train our campus security officers when we already contract with EPD," Bernstien said. "Giving them this authoritative power doesn't make sense because they only deal with minor infractions of the law--EPD handles real crimes."

The higher education budget already gives tens of thousands of dollars for 19 trained campus security officers. Passage of this bill produces up to 30 more officers. Not only will the new officers have their training subsidized by our educational dollars, but the 19 campus security officers the state already has will be retrained at students' expense.

"What we need is a crime deterrent, people with radios, people who have more authority. We don't need more officers," Sorenson observed. But the Senator is mistaken. While we don't need any more officers, our officers shouldn't bother themselves with the business of real police officers. Instead our campus security officers should concern themselves with walking people to their cars at night, locking up buildings and staying out of the way of students. It's what they're qualified to do.

Our campus security does not need more authority, it needs less authority.

[Editor's note: SB 504 passed the Oregon State Legislature later that month.]

Owen Brennan Rounds was Editor Emeritus of the Oregon Commentator at the time of the first printing of this article--May 8, 1995.