First and foremost, we fully and wholeheartedly support the movement to increase the wages paid to DPS officers to a level that competes with the salaries of other campus safety officers at campuses around DC. We believe that competitive pay for DPS officers would not only increase the quality of the officers who choose to work here, but that it would also help us retain officers who know the Georgetown campus and the Georgetown Community well, as opposed to losing them to other, higher-paying campuses.
We also look forward to advocating for the implementation of a bill passed this year by the GUSA Senate urging the University administration to designate hate crimes as Category C offenses in the Code of Student Conduct. Category C includes the most serious of offenses. Whereas bias is currently only a “parameter” of other violations, we are eager to work independently and with the Senate to make sure that hate crimes are handled here as serious offenses in their own right under the University’s policies, just as they already are under DC criminal law.
Lastly, we will support - both institutionally and financially - ongoing efforts by the Vice President for University Safety to install video surveillance in high-traffic areas of campus such as Red Square, the library steps, and the walkways around the Village A complex. We believe that this will help the police to catch perpetrators and, more importantly, it will help to deter crime in the first place.
