Date: March 4, 2020
To: The Rensselaer Community
From: Prabhat Hajela, Provost; Curtis Powell, Vice President of Human Resources; Peter Konwerski, Vice President of Student Life; Claude Rounds, Vice President of Administration
Rensselaer is committed to maintaining a safe environment for all students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Our Public Safety organization offers many resources to support campus safety, address problems and conflicts before they escalate into violence or crime, and protect the campus in emergency situations.
Our campus is relatively safe, yet situations may occur that affect the safety of individuals or groups at Rensselaer. While not reaching the level of emergency, these situations merit immediate attention.
As a best practice, we regularly assess safety measures, review safety operations, and improve policies for the benefit of the community. As a result of our ongoing reviews, Senate Bill S.7645 and Assembly Bill A.9712 were recently introduced, at our request, to enhance the safety of our campus community. Namely, the proposed legislation would make it possible for selected qualified Public Safety officers, who have completed extensive additional training, to be designated as Peace Officers. This designation would provide them with necessary capabilities that could not be otherwise obtained. It is important to note that this designation has already been granted to officers on other university campuses throughout the state of New York, such as Cornell University, Syracuse University, University of Rochester, Ithaca College, and the State University of New York.
We have consulted with New York universities that have Peace Officers and with local law enforcement agencies about various safety concerns unique to universities, and the legislation required to address them. In the past few weeks, we have engaged members of our community in extensive discussions, including student leaders, Student Life staff, and the Parents Council. In the coming weeks, we will discuss the proposed legislation at the Spring Town Meeting and we will meet with the Faculty Senate leadership.
In an effort to keep everyone informed and updated on the proposed legislation, we have created an expanded section on our Public Safety website. Throughout this process, we look forward to ongoing dialogue with the Rensselaer community about the effective and meaningful steps that can be taken to enhance campus safety.
