Des Moines Register
09-12-07
2 faculty senates favor arming campus police
U of I, ISU recommendations will be passed on to presidents
By LISA ROSSI
REGISTER AMES BUREAU
Ames, Ia. - The faculty senates of Iowa's two largest public universities voted
Tuesday to recommend that their schools join the other universities in their
conferences and arm their campus police.
The votes were 27-22 in favor at Iowa City and 38-27 in favor at Ames. The
recommendations will be passed on to the respective presidents at the U of I and
ISU.
The votes are the latest in a debate over whether to arm campus police, a probe
of public safety processes and protocols that was ordered at the state's three
universities after the campus shootings at Virginia Tech in April.
The University of Northern Iowa faculty senate voted against arming campus
police on Aug. 31.
UNI is the only school among its peer institutions that has certified officers who
are not armed. U of I and ISU officers are also the only ones in their respective
conferences who do not carry guns.
Some ISU faculty members said they supported arming campus police after
confronting dangerous situations themselves.
"We had two or three instances when I was associate director when there were
definite threats of violence against administrators at the university where we had
to have protection," said Joel Geske, a faculty senator and professor at the
Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.
At the University of Iowa, President Sally Mason she is leaning toward
recommending that the Iowa Board of Regents change its 40-year-old policy
against arming campus police.
Mason, who started as U of I leader Aug. 1, said she has received three letters of
support for the change for every opposition letter.
"I'm leaning toward the majority," she said.
U of I Police Chief Chuck Green, long an advocate of arming the police, said, "I
get the impression that certain people on campus think of us as the enemy, and I
don't know why."
Green was challenged by Kathy Heilenman, a U of I linguistics professor who
said all of Green's arguments were identical to those made a few years ago,
when police successfully pushed regents to arm them with Taser electric-shock
guns.
"Why can't you use Tasers in all the incidences you're describing?" Heilenman
asked.
Green replied, "Tasers work fine in all situations but one - when an officer is
facing lethal force. They don't work when you're more than about 21 feet away,
and even then you have to be dead-on to be effective."
Presidents of the three regent universities will make their recommendations for
arming campus police officers to the Iowa Board of Regents by today, said Gary
Steinke, executive director of the board.
Those letters will be made public Friday as part of the regents' docket. The
regents will consider whether to arm campus police officers at the Sept. 18-19
meeting in Council Bluffs, Steinke said.
The ISU recommendation cites several situations where armed university police
would have been beneficial.
Those include a situation in 2001, when ISU police were asked to stand by
during the termination of an employee with a history of volatility, according to a
letter signed by vice presidents and directors of public safety from the three
public schools. A campus department head had discovered notes that contained
lists of "people to kill." ISU officers were not armed when they monitored the
termination and escorted the employee from the premises, according to the
letter.
Also, in 2006, U of I police had to leave a building they were protecting to get
authorization from university administration to return with firearms. They were
assisting in protecting campus after an individual with a criminal history that
included firearms threatened to kill several in that building, the letter said.
"I've lived through 17 revolutions and one bloody anti-terrorist war in my country
of Argentina," said Ricardo Rosenbusch, an ISU professor in veterinary
microbiology and preventive medicine.
"I'm very familiar with guns, and what guns can do. I'm also familiar with the
courage of an unarmed person," he said, citing a Virginia Tech professor, Liviu
Librescu, who was killed when he leaped between the gunman and the students.