University of Iowa shifts focus to student well-being in re-imagining campus safety

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa public safety systems are ineffective for many — particularly minority and vulnerable students — and more mental health and non-law enforcement services could be fruitful, a yearlong review released this week found.

In a “Re-imagining Campus Safety” report, a 24-member committee — formed last summer amid Black Lives Matter protests and charged with recommending ways of making the campus safer for everyone — identified three key findings.

First, students at all levels are more likely to feel unsafe on campus and around UI police than are other campus community members like faculty and staff. That fewer than half the responding racial and ethnic minorities reported feeling safe around UI police, for example, limits officers’ effectiveness, according to the report.

“This is a critical finding for several reasons,” the report said. Because unsafe feelings can impact a student’s overall university experience, they could hurt retention and graduation rates — which for underrepresented students at Iowa are below levels at peer institutions.

“It is reasonable to assume that improving structures that support all students in feeling safe and supported on campus could, at the very least, impact the (underrepresented minority) student experience at Iowa positively,” according to the report.

Second, the report also found students at all levels were much more likely than faculty and staff to support a new strategy minimizing the role and budget of UI police and empowering community and campus networks to serve as first responders instead.

Breaking down the data, those who identify as LGBTQ+ were more likely to agree with the strategy minimizing campus police’s role and funding, as were Black, Asian and biracial students.

“All constituent groups, across all feedback options, support increasing financial resources for mental health, well-being, and basic needs,” according to the report. “Particular areas of focus were ensuring students have access to after-hours mental health support, providing non-law enforcement options for transportation to the hospital (when an ambulance is not necessary), and increasing investment in basic needs programs.”

A third finding highlighted UI police’s need to better communicate its strategies and processes — as many initiatives being implemented nationally “were nearly always already in place” in the department “even if our local community did not know about them or perceive them as effective.”

“The department has used, often for many years, the practices called for locally or nationally,” according to the report. “This disconnect speaks to a need for additional transparency and ongoing communication between UIDPS and campus stakeholders and supports creating a feedback and accountability structure, anchored at the UI leadership level.”

Recommendations

In identifying recommendations, the committee highlighted several constraints — including ones blocking consideration of any calls to abolish the campus police department.

“According to Iowa Board of Regents current policy, the University of Iowa is required to have campus police,” said the report, which also notes lawmakers in the last legislative session barred the public universities from budgeting less for campus police this year than last.

The report’s five recommendations, however, move away from a traditional law-and-order emphasis and focus on non-law enforcement response options for things related to mental health, basic needs and personal crises.

A timeline in the report notes some actions already are complete or in progress — like adding staff and resources for the UI Food Pantry and Clothing Closet and providing after-hour mental health resources.

‘Perspective-changing’

Mental health needs, which have been gaining traction across college campuses nationally, have become even more pressing in the pandemic.

“In every challenge, there’s an opportunity, and one of the opportunities that has come out of the challenges of COVID is just a broader nationwide understanding of the criticality of addressing mental health and well-being as a whole,” UI Vice President for Student Life Sarah Hansen told The Gazette. “Knowing that something that's happening in society affects us all differently, that there are some types of long-standing effects to things like this that we didn't anticipate, that also affords us the additional impetus to invest even more in supporting our students well-being.”

The importance of wellbeing-related aspects of public and campus safety that became evident through the yearlong process were “perspective changing” for Mark Bullock, interim co-director and captain of the UI Department of Public Safety.

One student Bullock questioned about campus safety, for example, said he would have felt safer as a freshman if he had more support figuring out his housing, his meal plans, his book needs and other campus-life issues.

“That was perspective-changing for me because they didn't talk about police, and they didn't talk about fire alarms, or any of the things that I generally think about as being public safety,” he said. “It was more of a well-being and quality-of-life concept to them. Things that I hadn't thought about before.”

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com