Ferris State University has done plenty, especially lately, to try and improve the safety of campus. But have they done enough?
Campus safety is obviously a nationwide issue. I don’t have to tell you that for you to understand that. Why? Because it is literally all over the news seven days a week, as a new story pops up seemingly minutes after we start to recoup from the last traumatizing occurrence.
For example, this past weekend, an Oregon high school football and track coach named Keanon Lowe, who also acts as a security guard at the school, managed to disarm and talk down a student who looked to have the intention of wanting to shoot up a classroom in his high school.
And therein lies the problem. This was a very fortunate ending to this situation. It could have gone poorly but there was security in place to do that. I don’t want to raise concern, nor do I want to cause a panic. However, what security is there to prevent this from happening in our many classrooms at Ferris?
Before I continue, the DPS here at Ferris does an excellent job. But, if they can’t seem to figure out who keeps stealing stuff from cars in Lot 4, then what are they going to do in this situation? Again, I have a huge amount of respect for them and what they do, and hopefully they’re never put into this sort of situation, but will they have enough help here at Ferris to make this sort of situation end as favorably as it did in the high school in Oregon.
Think about how easy it is to enter Ferris campus and how easy it is to access buildings. If you’re thinking long and hard about it, then stop. The answer is it’s incredibly too easy. If you really wanted too, you could get into any building on campus with no restrictions most times of the day. Also, you would be able to bring anything you want into any building on campus. That’s due to the lack of metal detectors and such campus wide.
So yeah, Ferris has made great strides, especially in the last few months to try and improve campus safety.
But again, how much you can fault the leadership of the school I don’t particularly know. But what I do know is that this campus can become much safer than it is right now … and by a lot, at that.