If you haven’t read the Idaho Statesman article headlined 2014 concealed weapons law costs Idaho colleges $3.7 million, please take a few minutes and read it. The article was written by Bill Dentzer and appeared online on February 3.
If the article can be believed, when the Idaho Legislature passed Senate Bill 1254 in the 2014 session, the presidents of the five schools mentioned in the article decided it was a license for them to go on a spending spree to upgrade their campus security programs.
Let’s be very clear: The law did not prescribe upgraded security. What these five college presidents did, they did on their own volition (but with your money). Why?
During the deliberation of the proposed legislation, the collegiate jefes testified against it. If you believed their testimonial entreaties during the legislative hearing, war, famine, pestilence, and death would befall their respective schools if screened and trained former law enforcement officers and citizens were allowed to carry concealed weapons in some but not all areas of their schools. The law passed in spite of the presidents’ unsupported assumptions of doom. So the petulant presidents went on a spending spree in hopes the public would blame Idaho’s legislators rather than question the credibility of the presidents with their unsupported doom-and-gloom assertions.
What questions were the presidents hoping would not be asked?
Well, take another look at what Dentzer’s Statesman article attributed to North Idaho College President Joe Dunlap:
• North Idaho College: $622,000 for unspecified personnel, a campus-wide exterior surveillance system and enhanced electronic access on doors.
- “…unspecified personnel…” Shouldn’t a competent college president, even one at North Idaho College, be able to more precisely articulate the need for new staff he supposedly “had to add?” “Unspecified personnel” sounds like asking for a money to hire people ostensibly for security but then quietly using the money to fund other positions (bait-and-switch).
- “…campuswide exterior surveillance system…” Exactly how will that help detect and exclude concealed weapons and identify the people carrying concealed weapons? X-ray vision, Joe?
- “…enhanced electronic access on doors.” Exactly how does that help detect and exclude concealed weapons and the people carrying them lawfully or unlawfully? Gun-sniffing electronic access control devices, Joe?
It seems to OpenCdA there is a glaring contradiction in these five presidents’ absurd arguments: The five amigos would have us believe the need to fund expensive security measures was created by the Legislature’s passing a new law imposing stricter requirements on already lawful concealed weapons permit holders. Apparently prior to passage of the new law, no one ever illegally carried concealed weapons on their campuses. (You believe that, right? No? Neither do we.) So where was their evidence that until the new law was passed, there was no threat posed to their campus’s safety and security by persons unlawfully carrying concealed weapons?
Before the new law was enacted, the presidents must have believed there was no significant threat posed by persons carrying illegally concealed weapons. After all, they had decreed that all concealed weapons were forbidden. And because of their decree, there were no illegal weapons on their campuses. (How many logical fallacies can you count in their “reasoning?”)
In truth, passage of the new law forced the colleges and universities to begrudgingly acknowledge what they have likely always known: There were concealed weapons being carried illegally on their campuses. Admitting that would have forced them to fund appropriate security countermeasures much sooner, but by ignorantly denying the existence of illegal weapons on campus, the presidents didn’t need to address the problem. Notice we didn’t say “plausibly denying the existence of illegal weapons on campus.”
No, all the Idaho Legislature’s 2014 law did was make the public more aware that some of Idaho’s college and university presidents and governing bodies have been failing to adequately address campus safety and security. If they had been acknowledging rather than denying reality, the campus security would have already been up to snuff. Their funding request is an admission that it hasn’t been and still isn’t. The presidents hoped the public would by into their line of organic fertilizer.
And that’s why the request for additional funding by these five colleges pegged the BS meter.
Welcome to Idaho. Set your clocks back fifty years.
Seems like this is an attempt by the 5 presidents to force the Idaho Legislature to repeal the law (that all of the presidents opposed and the Legislature –as representatives of the citizens–did not agree with the presidents’ position). The Legislature should,simply, ‘Just Say No’.
Comment by up river — February 4, 2015 @ 4:34 pm
up river,
That is exactly what the Legislature said.
The college presidents employed a tried and true bureaucratic stunt. They implied that by passing the CCW law, the Legislature “forced” the colleges and universities to upgrade their campus security. They evidently hoped the public would believe the Legislature had imposed an unfunded mandate on the colleges. That isn’t what happened at all.
Comment by Bill — February 4, 2015 @ 4:40 pm
I don’t think I can agree with your and up’s assessment of the need to upgrade. This is something that should have been done a long time ago. The idea of campus security only armed with pepper spray trying to face down someone with a handgun is senseless to begin with. Now that they will have to determine if the person can legal carry or not just adds to the job. Armed security will require more training and higher standards than before so more money.
Comment by Mike Teague — February 5, 2015 @ 10:57 am
Mike,
I think we do agree. Campus security should have been upgraded progressively as the communities changed and the threats to safety and security changed with them. The presidents denied that illegal weapons were being carried on campus, and that denial allowed them to represent a lower threat level than actually existed. When SB 1254 was enacted into law, they could no longer plausibly deny the presence of weapons on campus, so they decided to try and capitalize on the new law to try and get money to cover the costs of doing what they should have been progressively doing much sooner.
If the threat to campus security statewide is so much greater now, then I’d advocate the Idaho State Police placing POST-commissioned police officers on the college campuses in much the same way that WSU has with the Washington State University Police. I’d recommend the campus officers be ISP Troopers, probably specially trained to handle the additional challenges created by working in a college community. With that, they could be transferred between assignments just like any other Trooper.
Comment by Bill — February 5, 2015 @ 12:02 pm
For many years the CDA school district has had a CDA Police Officer (commissioned officers) stationed (full time) at each high school, and maybe other schools also. Whether that would cost effective or not for a college, I do not know. However, having people who have already gone through POST and who are current law enforcement employees, as the school security officers, is not a new idea.
Comment by up river — February 5, 2015 @ 4:43 pm
up river,
That’s correct. Particularly in the case of NIC, I would hope that the campus police department would be under the command of the State Police and most certainly not be subordinate to the NIC Board of Trustees, the President, or any NIC staff. Nor should it be subordinate to the City or County.
Comment by Bill — February 5, 2015 @ 4:54 pm