Many Georgetown students are worried about their safety when travelling back and forth from the relative safety of campus at night, whether it be to and from M Street bars or a friend’s house in Burleith. Indeed, these worries are well founded in harsh reality. The myriad of incident reports in the nearby vicinity are surely a sign that vigilance is required; however, the Department of Public Safety has proved incompetent to prevent even daylight robberies in crowded areas, such as the one that occurred at knifepoint in Cosi last year. This begs the question: Does DPS really make the Georgetown community safer?

It could, in fact, be argued that DPS only raises the price of an already exorbitant tuition in exchange for harassment and incompetent efforts to improve campus safety by inconveniencing students. What does DPS accomplish by stopping every car that attempts to drive down Prospect Street after a certain time of night? Perhaps it creates the illusion of safety for some, but more prominently, it produces an unnecessary delay and inconvenience. Ironically, those most inconvenienced by officers’ activities are also paying their salaries.

The number of DPS officers has increased this year, but the increase has only yielded more harassment of students. The officers demand to see GOCards on the street, suspect cigarettes of being marijuana joints and have a generally adversarial disposition toward the student body.

DPS has shown a great propensity for intrusion into the harmless actions of college students. The officers patrol the halls of dormitories at night, straining to discern any sound of music or whiff of alcohol. Far from making students feel safe in their home away from home, they intimidate and intrude. While Resident Assistants approach students in an open and familiar manner when breaches of the Code of Conduct occur, DPS has shown no such tact or familiarity.

Students may also be shocked to discover that any incident report filed by DPS against them for alcohol or noise violations may not be released to them, and often a copy of such a report will not be given to them under any circumstances. Why might this be? Could it be to defend the university’s reputation from rightful claims of DPS wrongdoing?

This may perhaps be necessary, because Georgetown has truly scraped the bottom of the barrel in its attempt to enforce the Code of Student Conduct. After all, it is a pitiful individual who responds to a college party in the middle of the night with a sense of satisfaction and even displays hubris at the dispersal of a gathering of friends engaging in — I know it’s taboo, but — fun.

No student should maintain the delusion that our physical safety or that of our property is more important to Georgetown or DPS than enforcing draconian moral codes after observing the rash of unsolved thefts, and even a would-be abduction of a student this past fall.

The Metropolitan Police Department has handled nearly all cases of serious crime that have occurred on campus at the request of DPS. Furthermore, the system itself is set up to limit the purview of DPS to only university-owned property, which is understandable, but only serves to institutionalize the false illusion of safety for many students.  Clearly DPS are unnecessary to students in the enforcement of any regulations that go beyond minor indiscretions or university grounds.

The increased presence of DPS on campus has been accompanied by nothing but greater harassment and greater costs of and to the student body. The cost of DPS expands beyond inconveniencing students and is partially responsible for the retardation of the endowment’s growth and the university’s academic improvement.

I propose that the students entreat the university to spend their money wisely and in the best interests of students, faculty and administrators alike by disbanding, or at least scaling back, DPS and diverting funding to our endowment. Obviously security personnel are needed — perhaps Allied Barton could be enlisted to fill the void — but a full-fledged police force? I think not. Maintaining such an extensive on-campus police force is as detrimental to the university’s finances as it is foolish in the false sense of safety it provides. Such austerity measures would allow greater funding for legitimate operations of the university, such as academic research and improved facilities.

A Georgetown without DPS is one which all students could be prouder in attending. There must be a rejection of ignorance and heavy-handed abuses of power in order to fund a greater capacity to seek the wisdom and knowledge which we, the students, matriculated to pursue.

John Woolley is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service. He is a member of The Hoya’s Editorial Board.