Since fall of 2013, Community Safety Officers (CSOs) have documented no less than ten incidents of Lewis & Clark students at Reed who have engaged in various and sundry mischief, including getting drunk (usually underage), openly smoking pot in groups with no Reedies in sight, joy-riding an electric cart, stegophily, and most recently, being uncooperative and confrontational with CSOs when asked to leave. In contrast, when I asked my counterpart at L&C if he had to deal with recalcitrant Reedies, he had no tales to tell (RKSK Initiation notwithstanding).
I have specifically maintained our CSOs priorities as community-focused with an emphasis on engagement that is low-key and non-confrontational. However, this model requires that our unarmed CSOs—who are prohibited from using force except to prevent injury—are able to do their work cooperatively with our community. This model works extraordinarily well with Reedies thanks to a long history of mutual respect, the Honor Principle, and the fact that we know one another pretty well. When we introduce people onto campus who have no vested interest in the place, have no concept of the Honor Principle, who are used to dealing with people in uniform from the traditional perspective, and who are intoxicated, we introduce a significant element of risk for all of us.
The primary risk is that L&C students will cause the obvious problems, including being physically and/or sexually aggressive. The collateral damage may be in how CSOs are required to engage with the community as a whole. If CSOs continue to encounter escalating confrontations with non-community members, we will have to adjust our presumptions when we talk to people whom we do not know. While Reed is relatively small, it is still not possible that a CSO will recognize every student—meaning that we may need to approach even our own students “as if” they present a potential safety risk. This would be a loss to us all.
To try and head this off, CSOs are taking a more direct approach to L&C students and other non-community members and excluding them if they are found in violation of our policies or otherwise disruptive. I have also begun sending our incident reports directly to my counterpart at L&C. Ultimately, however, Reedies can have the greatest impact by taking some personal responsibility for who is here by educating guests about our community—including how to interact with CSOs, limiting invited guests to a number that can be kept together, intervening with people who are acting badly, and calling CSOs to sort things out before they get out of control.
I want Reed to be a welcoming and inclusive place where guests are awed by our unique community—and, I hope everyone at Reed will resist the very human urge to be a bystander and just hope that someone else will take care of things.
In your service,
Gary Granger, Director of Community Safety