The Tripod

Media Credit: Tripod Archives The cover of a 1964 Tripod, which protested the banning of alcohol on campus. [Click to enlarge]

The campus safety situation at Trinity College has reached a nadir in the last few weeks following the sexual assault of a student on Vernon Street. While the staff of The Trinity Tripod has always tried to avoid making the news on which we report, we feel that the current situation requires a grand gesture by the student body, as initiated by the student press, in order to gain the attention it deserves from the College's leadership. In an effort to persuade the Administration that our safety is not a matter of money or resources but a base necessity, we have taken this issue to you - the student body.

The signatures collected in this issue represent students who are not satisfied with the state of campus safety at Trinity. 742 students signed but, more importantly, many students came forward with concerns about and solutions for safety on campus.

In 1964, a significant portion of the student body signed in support of a Tripod protest. This symbolic act was not done to improve campus security or climate, but to protest Trinity's decision to ban alcohol on campus. The Tripod feels that student safety is a far more important issue than drinking on campus, and while we used this 1964 issue as inspiration, we in no way believe the two issues to be of the same magnitude.

Trinity is unique amongst its sister institutions in that it is located in a dense urban center. While Hartford offers many positives, both students and administrators must remember that the city is one of our country's more dangerous and safety is of the utmost importance.

However, this does not mean that the only threats lie outside our boundaries. The Tripod wishes to stress that student-on-student crime is a constant threat at every college, and Trinity is no exception. If anything, student-on-student crime is more common, and, more disturbingly, it is reported to the student body much less frequently. The absence of an e-mail from Jorge Lugo is misleading - the coverage does not accurately reflect the prevalence of crime on campus.

The potential solutions, then, to safety problems at Trinity are fairly simple and must come from students, staff, and administrators alike.

First and foremost, the Office of Campus Safety must be relieved of all transportation duties, and those duties must be transferred to a new office. Not only does the task of transporting students across campus drastically limit Campus Safety's resources and ability to respond, but acting as chauffeurs and meter-maids breeds resentment between Campus Safety officers and students. One thing the students would like to make clear is that, in creating this new transportation office, the budget of the Office of Campus Safety must not be cut - any such budgetary cut would negate the purpose of this reform.

Moreover, Trinity must allot a more substantial budget for the Campus Safety Department in order to expand and improve its operations. This money should not go to what several students have dubbed the "ticket and tow," but to measures that directly increase student safety on campus.

Individual Campus Safety Officers must be held more accountable for their interactions with members of the community. It is their duty to conduct themselves with the utmost professionalism - a professionalism that should be shared by the community, students included. While students should be more responsible for their actions, the onus is on the Administration and Campus Safety to foster a community in which students can securely learn from their misjudgments.

Some may argue that, in our protest, we have neglected to provide specific solutions for the improvement of campus safety. Simply put, that is not our job. We are not experts; we do not presume to understand the specific details of the problem, but we do know that it is our right to be safe.

The SGA used diplomatic and parliamentary channels to address the issue - releasing a Campus Safety Bill of Rights - and, similarly, the Tripod is responding with the only means available: the power of free speech and free press.

The student body has grown tired of an administration that spends more time worrying about how to pay for campus safety than it does about how to ensure campus safety. Regardless of what actions are taken, action must be taken. We will no longer accept token gestures. We want concrete results and we want them now.

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