Posted on 10/04/2015 1:34:03 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Students and community members protesting Portland State University's then-proposal to arm campus security officers in a demonstration downtown last December.
Nearly 100 students walked out of the PSU Convocation opening ceremonies to protest the administration’s decision to arm campus security last December.
Inside the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom the diverse crowd of students chanted “Disarm PSU!” and “Black Lives Matter!” before leading the rally into the streets of downtown.
Olivia Pace, freshman at PSU and an organizer for the school’s student union who organized the event said the group’s attempts to work with administration to reverse their decision have gone ignored.
“[We] have tried for over a year to speak to the administration to try and stop the arming of campus security,” Pace said. “President Wim Wiwel and the Board of Trustees have ignored our pleas, so this is the only option left: to interrupt business as usual. President Wim asked us to have respect for the other students at the convocation. We’ve been asking for respect from the campus administration for the entire year. We’re ready to go, we’ll be working on this all year.”
Another freshman, first-year international student from Belgium, Grace Fazila joined the walkout after hearing the story of Sam Dubose, a Black man who’d been shot-and-killed by a campus police officer during a routine traffic stop in Cincinnati earlier this year.
Dubose’s killer, Officer Ray Tensing has since been indicted on the charge of murder.
“I never realized being Black was an issue until I came to the United States,” Fazila said at the Sept. 21 demonstration. “This makes me feel unsafe on campus. School should be a place of learning. You should not feel unsafe here.”
The campus officers are trained by the Portland Police Bureau before receiving their firearms.
To date, the university has four armed campus police officers: one sergeant, two patrol officers and one detective.
Last year, before approving the proposal to add armed officers to their campus, Portland State spokesperson Scott Gallagher told The Skanner said response time for the city’s police bureau in a non-emergency situation can be up to 20 minutes.
If there were an active shooter, the armed police officers assigned to the university could respond within 60 seconds, according to the university. The PSU campus is less than a mile from the Portland Police Bureau’s downtown precinct building.
For once, the Black Lives protesters weren’t attacking cops and looting businesses.
Seems like a lot of kids go to college to become more stupid ... a bachelors, masters or PHD in stupid?
PSU students crave notice on the national news. They feel upstaged by Umpqua.
A good alternative that exists is to require all instructors to acquire a CCW and to allow CCWs on campus. There need not be any requirement tat anyone be armed, just the general knowledge that some number of people in divers parts of the of the campus may be armed. It is cheaper than arming campus cops.
PSU? Portland State... Penn State... it’s all the same, no doubt.
For the sake of the gene pool, remove the armed guards.
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