The students and employees of Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) along with the parents of the TMCC E.L. Cord Foundation Child Care Center petition the implementation plan of consolidating the police and campus safety services of the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) with TMCC.  

While the proposed plan is supposed to save $562,277 annual savings or $2.8 million over the next 5 years, consolidating the campus safety services will not solve the budget issue. If anything, this will jeopardize the safety of all individuals throughout our several different campus locations. Why must the community college sacrifice our safety in exchange for cost savings? In addition, the consolidation will decrease the morale of our students, faculty, administrators, and parents of the community college. 

The TMCC campus police are proactive in educating and training different groups of the TMCC population on safety. For over 10 years, TMCC police have conducted training and field exercises with staff of the child care center.  The well-planned and executed drills prepare the staff as well as the TMCC police should an active assailant or other life-threatening emergency that may arise.  This is just one of the many proactive activities TMCC police have provided to protect, prepare, and serve our young children, students, families, employees, and visitors to TMCC.

Nationally, campus incidents are on the rise, and if safety is one of our priorities why would we decrease and consolidate our police and safety services? If anything, we should be increasing these services. What happens when TMCC and UNR police are consolidated? Who is going to ensure us that the quality and service we receive from the TMCC police will not be compromised? Both UNR and TMCC should be able to retain their own campus safety services.