Public Safety helps students play nice with neighbors

By Philip Ellefson, Staff Writer ellefson15@up.edu

With new officers, new job descriptions and a new focus on educating students, Public Safety is trying to form better relationships with students both on and off campus this year.

The relationship between UP students living off campus and other neighbors in the University Park neighborhood has been strained for years because of neighbors' annoyance with house parties in the area. This year, Public Safety is working hard to educate students about the responsibilities of living in a neighborhood.

Since the beginning of August, Public Safety officers have responded to at least 11 calls from neighbors regarding noise from house parties. Two of the responses resulted in parties being shut down by Public Safety, and the Portland Police handled two of the parties.

Director of Public Safety Gerry Gregg acknowledges that parties are an inevitable part of campus life and believes that students should not be denied the right to have parties.

"You've never heard me tell college students they can't have parties," Gregg said. "It's ridiculous."

But Public Safety has a zero-tolerance policy on parties if a neighbor complains about noise, according to Officer Carisa Rudnick.

"We basically have to shut down the party," Rudnick said. "We're not here to get the students in trouble. If there's a complaint, we'll have everybody leave, but that's all we ask."

Gregg said that when Public Safety responds to party complaints, the goal is not to punish students, but to make sure situations do not get out of hand.

"We're not coming out to write tickets or jam people up, but we'll help unwind the situation if it gets spun up too much," Gregg said.

He also said that it is not Public Safety's job to fix problems in the neighborhood. Instead, it is students' responsibility to communicate with their neighbors.

"If they made the neighbor mad, I can't make them fix it," Gregg said. "They have to work that out with the neighbor."

Some students agree that neighbors should address problems themselves before calling Public Safety. Junior Kent Nowak, who lives in a house off campus, thinks students and neighbors should try to solve problems themselves before calling Public Safety or the police.

"Public Safety should probably be called as a last resort after you've already tried dealing with it yourself," Nowak said.

In addition to helping students work through problems, Gregg is using proactive measures to educate students. Last week, he went through the neighborhood and introduced himself to many students in off-campus housing and gave them a copy of UP's house rules for living off campus.

Public Safety is also changing its approach to how officers relate to students and staff on campus. This year, each residence hall is assigned a primary and secondary liaison officer. The purpose of these liaisons is to provide students and residence hall staff a contact in the Public Safety department.

The liaison officers do not have scheduled hours when they patrol in the dorms, but they will attend all hall meetings and are encouraged to interact with students living in their assigned halls.

"It helps to establish relationships," Gregg said. "It pushes our folks to be involved in the dorm community when there's not a problem."

Rudnick, who is the primary liaison to Fields Hall and secondary liaison to Mehling Hall, believes that being a liaison officer will improve relations with students.

"By doing this more, it's going to get us out there more, and it's not always for a bad reason. Sometimes it's for a good reason," Rudnick said.

Christie Hall Director Joe Burke agrees that having liaison officers will improve Public Safety's relationship with students.

"I'm really excited about the liaison officers because it's a way of humanizing Public Safety," Burke said.

Public Safety is also undergoing personnel changes this year.

In addition to Gregg taking the lead in Public Safety, a second sergeant position will replace the assistant director position. Sgt. Charlie Brown will be starting at Public Safety at the end of the month. Officers Brian Hansen and Mark Thomas are also new faces on the Public Safety team.

Former state police officer

takes charge of Public Saftey

This year, Gerry Gregg is heading up Public Safety. He was hired as the assistant director on Feb. 23, following the death of Steve Watson, who served as the assistant director of Public Safety for ten years. Gregg took responsibility as director of Public Safety on Jul. 1, after the resignation of Harold Burke-Sivers, who held the position for 11 years to work fulltime on his ministry.

Gregg, who worked for the Oregon State Police for 26 years, graduated from UP in 1981. He also has three children who graduated from UP, which inspired him to take the job as director of public safety.

"I'm very passionate about the success of the university, given that it helped all of our kids get through school here," Gregg said.

He also chose to take the job because it enables him to contribute to the UP community as a whole.

"I liked the opportunity to be involved in a very close-knit community, both the campus community and the greater neighborhood community that we fit into," Gregg said.

- Philip Ellefson