Aspen Rush
Managing Editor
In last week’s edition of the Voice, a Viewpoint titled, “We need consistent enforcement,” insisted that Security and Protective Services (SPS) should enforce COVID-19 policies. While I respect the sentiment behind this author’s article, the College must employ a different approach to ensure student’s health and safety.
My first year at the College, security maintained a nearly invisible presence. My interactions with them were limited to friendly waves on Beall or requesting their help to get into my locked room. For my first two years on campus, I held no hostility towards SPS. Since I have arrived back on campus after my semester off, it is clear that things have changed. Security now travels in groups of two, three or four. They drive on sidewalks in the middle of the night. They have refused to help students get their cars out of the snow, refused to help students with dead animals, have accused students of suspicious activity and have attempted to search them without reasonable cause. In this new era of SPS, everywhere I walk, I feel security’s eyes on me. If you haven’t noticed it so far, think about how physically present they are. Whether that means they are parked in Lowry circle or walking in a pack in your building, they are always there.
Is this keeping students safe? I don’t think so. Thus far, their presence has only negatively impacted my experience at Wooster and I think most students would agree. The call for increased security is out of touch with the realities of this campus. While I agree that COVID must be taken seriously, this argument does not acknowledge what a heightened security presence means to so many students.
In the summer of 2020, students launched a petition on change.org called “No Cops on C.O.W.” As of the date of print, that petition has 1,336 signatures. Do you really want to advocate for an increased SPS presence when so many students have explicitly expressed that it makes them feel unsafe?
In this petition, students communicated their concerns about security, writing, “They bring with them a culture of racist violence inherent to the nature of policing. Security officers like Steve Glick have made it very clear they have ‘full police authority when [working].’ In doing so, they make our campus equally unsafe for Black and brown lives.” The Viewpoint’s vague calls for security to enforce “accountability” indicates blatant ignorance of POC voices calling for the abolition of SPS.
In response to the claim that the College does not take COVID seriously, the article’s alarmist rhetoric contributes to the general unease students already feel. The language used paints the larger part of students as ignorant. We are not “unknowingly witnessing an increasing number of Coronavirus cases slowly rise above our heads,” nor are we “doomed.” In fact, there are reliable measurements of the public health situation and we have continually decreasing rates of COVID-19. Wooster has mishandled the pandemic in a variety of ways, such as allowing sports teams to play games without masks, forcing COVID-positive students to share a communal bathroom and allowing students to eat in Lowry without social distancing. Yet with that being said, your concerns are misdirected. The answer is not increased policing, but rather policies that effectively prevent transmission. An effective solution to COVID-19 is not one that makes a majority of students feel unsafe on this campus.
