Campus Affairs
Date: 10/10/13
Time Started: 6: 30
Time Ended: 7: 43
Here: Rode, Underwood, Anderson, Yip, Morgan, Pav, Hetland
Absent: McAteer
Agenda: Safety walk, arming campus police
Future projects: Arming campus police bill
Rode: Safety lighting walk ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!! 28 people or more are coming!!! Public safety knows we’re doing this so they wont respond to every blue light. Senators be professional, VERY PROFESSIONAL. Speaker systems allegedly does not work that well so that’s something to look out for. Also please please please show up 10-15 mins early so that way we’re all here on time. Response
time is supposedly two and a half mins for a blue light. Also note if you can’t see a blue light from one, we’re not going to order 30 blue lights but it’s a good thing to note. Also October 18th I’m meeting with a lady who works with public safety to help come up with a safety plan.
Cody: we need a better response system, like the alert system is ineffective, place for people to go if
they’re outside.
Pav: last year the schools Internet and cell service basically collapsed something to look into.
Yip: URI actually outsources the servers for the emergency alert system
Rode: Dr. Dooley said they helped fix that, also going off of Cody that is a big issue that we should look
into, last year no one knew what was happening
Hetland: I don’t know maybe they could go to the police station it’s the only safe building I can think of
Yip: expand the alert system to faculty
Rode: Senator Schaffer also said that Uri is VERY far away from the nearest hospital and EMS doesn’t
train for a high alert thing such as a school shooting
Yip: what did Virginia tech student body do after what happened? (Definitely something to look into).
Morgan: in Uri 101 you take the alcohol awareness thing why not make it emergency alert oriented as
well.
Hetland: are they hiring more Uri police?
Cody/Pav: at the forum, we believe they said they are hiring 3 more officers
Rode: Next week senate is issuing our opinion on arming campus police. How do we feel about this?
Hetland: I see both sides to it and it is a difficult subject. I mean Uri isn’t a high crime campus, but if something happens like Chaffee then they may need it. Pav: like I said at the forum having live ammo in the station isn’t bad that way they have if they need it, and the risk of an accidental shooting on an innocent student is almost none. Otherwise the risk of an accidental shooting is very high it takes one intoxicated student to do something stupid and cost them their life.
Cody: they should take a safe zone training of some sort, the sociology professor at the forum had some good points about racial discrimination.
Underwood: having weapons is a valuable resource even if we don’t use them, other police stations may
need back up at times and we can help out if needed
Hetland: decision should be made by Uri, South Kingston, and state police they have the experience necessary to help make an informed decision. The State police said we should arm our police if they say it’s a good idea then their experience is a good thing to support.
Rode: the bill can be written many different ways saying senate supports it on the grounds that they undergo diversity training and arms training. Or we don’t support it cause of XZY, Cody: why not open up a survey monkey to ALL of Uri to gain an understanding of what their opinion is. Its something a lot of people should have an opinion
Rode: I’ll talk to Kilduff about it, but that’s a good idea
Yip: I’d stress more psych evaluations and training
Underwood: can’t we have a “how strongly do you feel about arming campus police” scale of 1-10 sort of thing.
Cody: I say keep it as basic as possible, I feel that black and white answers will help us the best
Rode: I’m going to look into sending out the survey monkey over the list serve
Cody: yeah it should be on the floor for Wednesday the second we get approval for it
Pav: no the more it sits the more info we can grab and make a better bill and a stronger opinion for the
student body which is what we as senators represent.
Hetland: getting all the info shouldn’t take more than three days, COME PREPARED TO THE MEETING.