A public safety officer can carry a gun any time someone thinks it's necessary. But from none of these problems was it clear, Lawler said, that having weapons would improve anybody's safety. Our traditional campus policy should be seen as pioneering a new concept of security. Allowing public safety officers to carry arms capitulates to the culture of violence that we're trying to combat. I agree with what people are saying about the violence of our society, but we're deluding ourselves if we think that by saying it isn't so, we solve the problem of violence.
Safety is our police.
Robert Palmer, vice president for student affairs, said that the proposed new policy is a shift away from the standard public safety model. We are moving from the old model to more of a police force model. We're one of the last universities in the country not to have armed public safety officers. We've consulted with many groups, and we believe that if we are to provide the safety that you want, to ask us to do that without the proper tools would be a mistake. But it's my understanding that the police concept emerges in their thinking for several reasons.