The College of Wooster’s relationship with the Wooster Police Department and its own Security and Protective Services Department puts the lives of Black and brown students in danger and makes the College of Wooster community less safe. 

According to the College’s own policies “Security and Protective Services has a close working relationship with the City of Wooster Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.” The College of Wooster holds contracts, policies, and agreements with local police. These contracts facilitate coordination and communication with police and bring more police on campus. Wooster and Wayne county police are violent and racist, like all institutions of policing in this country. The college has explicit policies and practices of calling the racist police to address drug use, mental health emergencies, and noise disturbances unequally yielded against  Black and brown students. The college maintains a policy of calling the police to report alleged drug use, a policy that does not exist on other campuses, and which facilitates a continued and racist war on drugs against students.

But it is not only the College’s cooperation and coordination with the Wooster Police Department that makes the community less safe. The College’s own Security and Protective Services Department is internally entangled with policing. Many of the security guards are themselves reserve and former police officers. 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. 

To defend Black lives, Wooster must disentangle policing from our community and KEEP COPS OFF CAMPUS. No more calls for “sensitivity training,” body cameras, or reform.

The question of “what’s next” may be amorphous and unclear, but our steps following the dissolution of the Security and Protective Services Department should look to comprehensive and robust preventative care. The triggers which lead to reckless use of alcohol and drugs, potential harm to self and others, and other incidents that receive SPSD response, have their roots in the systemic nature of white supremacy. 

When we ask “how will we be safe without the police?” we operate under the assumption that police are providing safety instead of acting as the largest source of harm. Asking this question prioritizes the safety of privileged students over the safety of those vulnerable to police violence. 

Our demands are simple: 

1.  End all contracts and cooperation with the local Wooster Police Department
2. End all policies to call the police on students or on campus
3. Dissolve the Security & Protective Services Department
4. Instead, invest in resources that REALLY make our community safe: we still need safe rides and doors unlocked but these roles cannot be filled by security or police officers. Examples of such investments are as follows: 
   • Substance abuse counselors for students who are impacted.
   • An increased student wage to curb the need for students to participate in the underground economy. This must not come at the expense of staff members, they must also have their wages increased to a liveable wage for Wayne County.
   • Resources for addressing interpersonal harm outside of the criminal justice system