One of the stranger arguments that has come forth in the two letters, and now a statement from firefighters’ union president Bobby Weist, is the notion that public safety is somehow not the job of the university.
As former Mayor Ruth Asmundson, Former Supervisor Betsy Marchand, former Councilmembers Ted Puntillo and Mike Corbett, and Alan Fernandes noted, UC Davis’ “central mission has nothing to do with providing public safety services…”
Senator Wolk and others sounded a similar theme in their November 19 letter: “We believe that public safety — fire services, police protection, and medical emergencies — are basic municipal functions.” They add, “We believe that governance of public safety is and must remain a core function of the elected City Council of Davis.”
Finally, in similar language they note, “This proposed action would place a well-established and effective municipal service within an entity whose primary mission is higher education and research, not public safety… We believe that community wide fire and medical emergency service is not a core function of the University.”
Clearly, this idea came from Davis Professional Firefighters Association President Bobby Weist. In a news story on News 13 in Sacramento, he was quoted as saying, “It’s a great university. They have great firefighters, but the university’s business isn’t public safety. That’s the business of a city.”
But where does this idea come from? UC Davis has its own police department and fire department. They have a campus of more than 30,000 students, they have thousands of faculty members, and they have even more university employees.
Vice Chancellor John Meyer who, over a decade ago, was city manager of Davis noted that the “core mission is teaching, research and service. A city’s core mission certainly does include the provision of safety services to residents.”
As he points out, “The university also provides a range of municipal type services (water, wastewater, high voltage power distribution, recreation programs, refuse recycling collection, police and fire services, etc.).”
Why is that? Because the university is a huge entity that has to run almost like its own municipality. That is precisely why they would hire a former city manager to be in charge of these programs.
Vice Chancellor Meyer added, “The fire department proposal is designed to see if we can craft innovative ways to partner in the provision of management services.”
“As we have stated, we believe the proposed model allows each agency to retain control over activities that affect its residents,” he said. “I respect the views of the authors, I just simply believe partnerships do not signify surrender of authority, but rather a more strategic use of the public’s resources.”
It was not long ago that the notion of public safety got Vice Chancellor John Meyer and Chancellor Linda Katehi in some hot water.
The pepper-spray incident played out in part due to the perception that individuals not affiliated with the university, coming in from more radical sectors from Oakland and elsewhere, could pose a danger to the student population.
In the Kroll report, the concerns became the justification for the ill-fated tent clearing operation.
Chancellor Katehi’s words were: “We were worried at the time about that because the issues from Oakland were in the news and the use of drugs and sex and other things, and you know here we have very young students . . . we worried especially about having very young girls and other students with older people who come from the outside without any knowledge of their record . . . if anything happens to any student while we’re in violation of policy, it’s a very tough thing to overcome.”
The notion of public safety and loco parentis played a huge role in the decision for the dismantling of the UC Davis Occupy encampment. While the administration was rightly criticized for misreading the situation and overreacting by ordering the tents cleared, the idea that the administration and UC Davis does not have as part of its mission the protection of the students and employees at the university is not only wrongheaded, it is flat out insulting.
The vice chancellor, in his comments to the Vanguard, rightly takes the high road of explaining that the university, in addition to its teaching functions, does have to carry out a large number of municipal functions.
Mr. Weist goes on to question why the city would give “a school system financial stake in a city service.”
“It just doesn’t make sense to us, and we’re looking for people who can lead this department further into the future,” he said.
But the city manager does not agree.
“We don’t think the governmental entity difference makes any difference at all. We do lots of things with the university, as do many cities throughout the state,” Steve Pinkerton said.
The city council on Tuesday made it clear that there will be accountability and oversight by the city. The rest is really a power play by the union, fearful that they will further lose their influence over municipal affairs and governance over their own department.
If there are legitimate concerns, let us lay them out. But the idea that the university is not in the business of public safety is ludicrous.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I share your thoughts on this David. As a parent who has had two children move away to college, I certainly see it as part of the responsibility of a university to ensure the safety of their students. This argument seemed beyond weak, to just plain erroneous to me.
Of course the university is in the business of safety. In fact, it appears that UCD is so obsessed with safety it would pepper-spray a group of trespassers just because of the slight increased risk that a student or UCD employee might be harmed.
We’re still working on the new comment system – at this point it appears that you can’t post unless you are registered.