Every year we pay more money for our education, and every year they make more cutbacks; degrading the quality of education we receive. I think the next time we decide to make cutbacks, we should disband the University Police Department. It is possible that the revenue they bring in outweighs their costs, but that revenue is just more out of the students’ pockets made from needless tickets. The services that the University Police Department provides are nothing that the SLOPD couldn’t perform themselves. Why don’t we shut down the University Police Department and take some of that extra money to pay SLO Police Department to drive on campus every once in a while to harass bike riders and give out tickets at the meters and up by the intramural soccer fields between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m.
The University Police Department does everything, but “Protect and Serve.” They ignore rape or hate crimes, which are some of few forms of crime that actually exist on this campus. Especially since rich white people can get away with anything. When it comes to hate crimes, such as the egging of the GLBU booth a few years ago, we all know how useful the University Police Department was there. Apparently, at Cal Poly, if you are gay, then you don’t deserve the same rights and protection as the rest of the campus. The University Police Department doesn’t “Serve and Protect” anything but themselves. If we don’t disband the UPD, we can at least change the slogans on their patrol cars to something more suitable such as “Spending lots of your money to give you parking tickets and making sure bike riders don’t ride on the sidewalk.”
Leonard Bessemer
Art and design junior