Public safety has recently been targeting athletes. This is somewhat similar to the police practice of racial profiling. Ordinarily I would care less about some random jock getting written-up for having a party, but things are starting to get out of hand.
This campus has the Residence Life staff go on rounds twice every night to make sure nothing outrageous is going on. Public Safety is supposed to be there just to back-up the RA’s. There is no need for a P.S. officer to walk unasked into a relatively quiet building; this can only cause more of a rift between the students and the administration. The school wants to retain students, but it makes the living situation uncomfortable and awkward. No one wants to live in a place without any freedom.
Now I don’t agree with all the students. There have been many times that I feel people deserved to be penalized for stupidity. But there are definite instances that should have just been left alone.
The most targeted group on campus is the men’s soccer team. Granted they can be loud, obnoxious and stupid, but they are usually quite easy to control. There is no reason that P.S. should go out to specifically look for a soccer guy with a beer.
Just a confession, I’m no angel. I like to party. It is very likely that I am out as much as the soccer guys, but I have never been written up. There are even times that I can say that I honestly deserved to get caught, and was lucky enough not to. The one time that I actually got to hang-out with my friends on the soccer team, P.S. just walked up to the room without even a knock and told everyone to leave. No one was written-up, but that was still an unfair situation for the men on the soccer team.
The other week after a dance there was an abundance of P.S. officers on duty in the CAC. There was one stationed on every floor and two posted outside the soccer and women’s lacrosse apartments. There was no reason for any of this. First of all, there was hardly anyone on campus. Secondly, there were definitely no problems in the CAC at all. There was no noise, there were very few people in the building, and no one was complaining about anything.
I do not remember last semester being very disorderly, but that may just be me. From my memories this campus has a pretty good record – no alcohol poisoning, a minimal number of arrests and not much damage to the campus. It is very hard to understand why P.S. is cracking down harder after a nice semester, it can only make things worse.
