Post #7: Are We Safe Yet?

In 1996, Oberlin College’s  on campus security force, then known simply as  the  “Department of Security ,” was re-branded with a kinder and gentler (if slightly wordier)  title  :  The Office of Security and Safety. Last fall , the same  on- campus  Keepers -Of -The- Peace underwent yet  another verbal makeover, morphing  this time into the “Office of Campus Safety.” 

Does anyone detect an emerging theme? Is it possible  that something   about the word “security”  makes Oberlin students feel unsafe.?To be sure:  the phrase “secure space” doesn’t land  quite as gently on the ear as the infinitely more fashionable  “safe space.” The word “secure,” after all, is more likely to conjure up post-9/11 images of  Dick Cheney sheltered  in a “secure, undisclosed location.”

But maybe I’m   making too much of an essentially semantic distinction. The Oxford English Dictionary assures us  that the two “S” words  (“Safety” and “Security”) can be used interchangeably.  But is it then merely a coincidence   that     Oberlin’s Campus Security Office has been renamed not once, but twice, over the past generation,  in ways that progressively elevate the word “safety”  at the expense of the word “security”?

No. It’s not a coincidence. This   change in nomenclature reflects  the newly  privileged status  of the phrase  “safe space” in virtually all aspects of current academic life,  curricular as well as  extra-curricular.  Indeed – in academia—( if nowhere else ) the word safety has  acquired  a new matrix of meanings that have  little or nothing to do with conventional, dictionary definitions of either safety or security: (e.g.  protection against bodily harm, freedom from legitimate fear of external threats).

 In  December of 2014,   then President Krislov assembled a committee for the purpose of recommending ways in which  Oberlin’s  Campus Safety and Security  officers might improve their overall performance (or at least, their  overall  image ) in the eyes of the student body. The goal, In other words, was to bring Oberlin’s S and S squad into compliance  with the new conception of what it means to be “safe” on campus.

According to the Review ,

“The committee’s recommendations included mandating ‘cultural, ethnic and gender identity sensitivity training, finding ways to encourage non-confrontational interactions between Safety and Security and other members of the community…. The report also urges using less threatening, ‘non-paramilitary uniforms’ that would ‘further emphasize their support purposes over policing.’ One of the proposed changes includes updating the name to Safety and Support Services.”

To those  who live outside the  protective bubble that  encircles Oberlin College, some of these suggestions—especially the sartorial ones—will sound like proposals for a Monty Python sketch. But could John Cleese or Michael Palin have come up with  anything funnier than the actual words of Marge Burton,  then director of Oberlin Safety and Security (who was eager to assure  The Review that “some of the suggested initiatives had already been preemptively attended to…. such as the creation of ‘softer,’ less police-like uniforms.”

Given  that Oberlin safety officers are unarmed, it’s not unreasonable  to insist that their uniforms not be easily confused with those worn by the Men -in -Blue (who do carry sidearms.) But must we dress them in baby blue?

For the most part, the Krislov recommendations  focus  on what  Oberlin S and S should not be: that is:  they should neither look nor act like Police Officers. But with regard to what they should be  (i.e. what we want these college employees  to actually do….) the report is distressingly vague. All we’re told is that the new and improved S and S should  “emphasize their support purposes over policing.” But what, in actual practice,  does that mean?

One possible answer to that question can be found in a diplomatically worded message from Oberlin Campus Safety e-mailed to the entire student body three  days after  classes  resumed this semester:

Long story short:  Students are raising a  ruckus over the fact that Oberlin city police have been allowed — for the very first time —to   issue jaywalking tickets to students who can’t be bothered to use the designated crosswalk on W. Lorain  leading   from The Science Center to Wilder Hall.  A few days later (on Sept 13^th) , The Oberlin Review covered the  ensuing controversy in  an article that began on the  front page.  It  quoted a number of aggrieved students , including a senior, Buster Coes, who complained  “I’m from New York City  where we jaywalk all the time. It didn’t even register to me that I could get a ticket for jaywalking.“

David Mathisson , a second year student, sounded  even more upset:  “When everybody was getting ticketed for jaywalking, there was a lot of frustration, anger, and energy ….”  he complained.  But unlike  Coes, who seemed  content merely  to register his indignation ,   Mathison was  determined to do something about this  moral outrage.   And according to the Review,

“ Mathisson organized a Collective Jaywalking event on Facebook in hopes that students could all gather and illegally cross the street at the same time as a form of protest. “

In other words, Mathisson didn’t  just talk the talk. He walked the (jay) walk.  And in so doing, he demonstrated that  social justice remains a high  priority for  Oberlin students– in spite of dire predictions that the Gibson verdict might exert a deterrent effect on campus activism.  One can only imagine  how Mathisson—had he been an Oberlin student in November of 2016—might have responded to the arrests of three fellow students outside of Gibson’s bakery. Perhaps he would have organized a mass shoplifting event,  with the higher purpose of persuading  town police  that Oberlin students should not be  subject  to the  same  penalties that are routinely imposed on  every  other  adult caught violating town ordinances.

But the problem isn’t just that Oberlin students crave immunity from the long arm of the law.  The deeper problem is the means by which they  hope to achieve that  protection. And this in turn helps answer our question about what Oberlin students expect from the Office of Campus Safety.

There’s a remarkably revealing sentence  in  the 2014 edition of College Prowler, one of those guidebooks that college-bound high school students and their parents consult when  deciding  which schools to apply to.   In the section devoted to Oberlin  Campus Safety , the editors quote a  student who confidently explains  that    “Safety and Security are there to protect you against the Police.” *

In other words, when it comes to  “situations” like the recent  jaywalking controversy,  students expect (or at least,  hope) that Campus Safety Officers will, if necessary, actively intervene to “protect” them from  unwanted encounters with the Police. Why else, in the  Sept. 6^th  e-mail from Campus Safety  announcing  the new jaywalking policy, would  they have felt compelled to remind students that  “it would  be inappropriate for Campus Safety to contact the police department to discourage them from enforcing the pedestrian laws?” Wouldn’t that be obvious to any reasonable person who isn’t wrapped in the Oberlin bubble? And would the e-mail have even broached this awkward  subject if Campus Safety hadn’t been receiving  requests (or demands!) from students to prevail upon the Police to stop issuing citations for jaywalking?

But if you’re still skeptical about the proposition  that—at the end of the day– what Oberlin students  REALLY want is for Campus S and S to “protect (them)  against the Police,”  allow me to direct your attention to yet another Oberlin Review article about an earlier  law enforcement  controversy.

In November of 2015,  three students were ticketed by members of the State Highway Patrol for underage drinking. It’s worth noting that this incident occurred   almost exactly one year before the Gibson protests. And with the benefit of hindsight, the Review’s account of this dust- up  reads like a prophetic warning about the debacle that would unfold twelve months later.  The story, published   in the November 20, 2015 edition of the Review, was  titled “Students Ticketed by State Police at ’Sco” ; and it  focused  on the travails of one of the three students who were cited for  drinking underage:  

 “College sophomore Alizah Simon unsuspectingly encountered undercover state police officers outside the ’Sco on Friday night. For carrying a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Simon was confronted and ticketed by the two officers…. Since Oberlin is traditionally a laidback campus that generally doesn’t punish or investigate students for underage drinking, Simon said she was very surprised by the incident. ‘It felt really arbitrary. It’s a college campus, obviously kids are going to be drinking underage,’  said Simon.  ‘If you’re state police, don’t you have something better to do? The ’Sco always felt like a safe place to be casually drinking, so I’ve been a little on edge all week.”

Now…it neither shocks nor surprises me that an underage  student would be spotted  carrying an open beer can on the sidewalk outside the Student Union. (I’ll save my moral indignation for those who commit mortal, rather than venial, sins.) But it’s worth noting the way in which Ms. Simon uses the word “safe” to describe the ‘Sco as a space in which underage students feel free to drink alcohol without fear of disciplinary consequences.

Still, the real scandal is  that  Ms. Simon (and others) were so indignant that  Campus Security hadn’t…somehow…  “protected “  her  from those State Highway Patrol busybodies (who just happened to be driving past Wilder on Rt. 511 late one night when they noticed what appeared to be illegal consumption of alcohol.)

According to the same Nov. 20^th  story  in The Review:  

“Student Senate Liaison Megs Bautista, said that Safety and Security should have done more to prevent the police from investigating students. ‘If [the College is] looking to be proactive in student safety, they should’ve stepped up and had S&S officers intervene… because now they’re wrapped up in all this legal bullshit….I find these manipulative and coercive tactics extremely unsettling and deplorable, and my heart goes out to the students affected by such an abuse of power and an abuse of the law.’ Bautista said.

And this isn’t just any old student speaking. This is the co-chair of Student Senate, official “voice” of  the Oberlin student body.  Whether or not Ms. Bautista truly speaks for a majority of Oberlin students, I cannot say.  But clearly,  she exudes  the aura of   arrogant entitlement  that much of the “outside world” has come to associate , however stereotypically , with “OBERLIN STUDENTS.”

To those who believe in  common sense, Oberlin Students (with or without quotation marks) often appear  to be living in an alternative Harry Potter-like universe where  Campus  Safety Officers are expected to place a protective “cloak of invisibility” around them,  thereby,  immunizing them against the piercing gaze of the State Highway Patrol and the Oberlin City Police. Anyone who wonders why this College has become synonymous in the popular imagination with Aristophanes’ Cloud Cuckoo-Land need only glance at the following letter to the editors of the Oberlin Review. It was written by a resident of Avon Lake,  Ohio who happened upon the Review essay I’ve just been quoting from:

“I was in Oberlin this last weekend and picked up a copy of the Nov. 20 edition of The Oberlin Review. What caught my interest was the article, ‘Students Ticketed by State Police at ’Sco,’ What is troubling to me, and I hope to other responsible Oberlin administrators, faculty, students and local residents is what appears to be the ‘Oh well’ attitude by the offenders and individuals mentioned in the article. What the three students did was illegal — they were caught and will have to answer for their behavior. This is what happens in a society governed by laws. Likewise, we should expect college students, who will hopefully graduate, to conduct themselves in a manner that will be expected of them once they leave school and move on with their lives.”

There is every reason to believe that the author of this letter “speaks” for her  Avon Lake neighbors in much the same way that Student Senator Megs Bautista speaks for the majority of her fellow Oberlin students. And even though this letter was published twelve months before  the Gibson incident ,   its comments about the  three underage drinkers outside the ‘Sco in 2015  are  equally applicable to the would-be shoplifters a year later.  

Avon Lake by the way,  is located  about 20 miles N.E. of Oberlin and a mere fourteen miles from downtown Elyria, where the “Gibson’s Bakery vs. Oberlin College”  trial took place.   As a small town in Lorain County with a population about two and half times that  of Oberlin’s , Avon Lake  was –in all probability—home to at least some of the Lorain County residents who were   summoned  as potential jurors for the Gibson  trial last May. 

The toxic seeds that would eventually blossom into the Gibson fiasco were   planted even  earlier.  But   they were fertilized and cultivated every time Oberlin students were granted –implicitly or explicitly—immunity from the ordinances intended to regulate all adult behavior throughout the entire city of Oberlin. The arrogant assumption  that these regulations   either do not or should not pertain equally to Oberlin students was surely one of the reasons  the Jury came down so hard on the College in  both its verdict and  its recommendations for damages.

Indeed, throughout the course of the trial, nothing proved more shocking than revelations about  the sheer number of times (not to mention, the sheer number of  ways)  College administrators attempted to actively interfere with the efforts of Oberlin Police, prosecutors, and judges to do what society-at-large  expects of them:  enforce the law, without fear or favor. It all comes down to this: No one—neither Donald Trump nor Meredith Raimondo nor any of the approximately 2,800 Oberlin Students is above the law.  (To be continued…..)

* “Calling the  police” (rather than  Campus Safety Officers ) in response to   disturbances on-campus is the third rail of Oberlin College politics. Not even Oberlin  College Presidents are exempt from this unwritten, but axiomatic,  prohibition. (S. Frederick Starr found that out  the hard way in 1990.)