By Michael Bernaschina Contributing writer
Members of the faculty, Public Safety, the Selinsgrove police and the state police gathered for a public forum on Jan. 25 to discuss recent incidents of hate speech on campus.
Located in Faylor Lecture Hall, the forum was led by a panel of Angelo Martin, director of Public Safety, Cheryl Stumpf, counselor and outreach coordinator for the Counseling Center, Sgt. Girard Hughes of the state police, Richard Blair, community services officer and public information officer for the state police, and Thomas Garlock, chief of the Selinsgrove police department.
Each panelist spoke about their respective department, and its role in addressing and dealing with these incidents.
These incidents have included a swastika being drawn on a dorm white board and a message written in chalk on Kurtz Lane. “We need to do more of what we do best. Community policing absolutely relies on each one of us. If you see something, you need to say something,” Martin said.
Garlock offered a similar message. He said, “It’s my hope that through this forum and through similar ones, hopefully in the future, that we can work together as a team, that we can talk, we can engage in the process of understanding, and through that process we can educate those who obviously have no education on how to interact with our peers.”
Hughes also added, “As a station commander in the county in which you live, I take it very seriously.”
Hughes continued, “In the last three years, we have not investigated one [crime] that would be constituted as a hate crime, so I guess that’s good news. There are certain times where I suppose you had a tire slashed, and maybe it was because of your color or something, but because we cannot prove that, we can’t report it as such.”
Hughes also brought up the UCR, the Uniform Crime Reporting System, a website run by the state police that’s entirely accessible to citizens, where anyone can look up the crimes that have been reported in their area and use it as a tool to stay informed.
In the event that a hate crime is reported, Hughes described the actions that the department will take. “So if you say this happened at your house and you live in an area that we primarily cover, we’re going to go to your house,” he said.
“We’re also going to canvas your neighborhood. We’re going to talk to your neighbors and see if they happened to see something. But like I said, if that’s not reported to us, we can’t get that ball rolling,” Hughes added. Stumpf spoke about the particular training they offer at Student Life and the Counseling Center that deals with these concerns.
“We do active bystander training,” she said. She explained that this teaches students what to say and how to act when intervening in a situation. She also spoke about step-up training, which is designed to help students learn to stand up to their peers.
“You probably have heard about step-up training, and step-up training is all about being able to learn how to tolerate when people don’t receive your stepping in very well,” she said. “When we stand up for what is right, it’s not always easy.”
In addition to the panelists, members from various student groups on campus spoke, offering their support. Among them were the SGA, Hillel, and the Interfraternity Council, which offered a walking service for anyone uncomfortable with walking home alone.
“You’re trying to think a couple steps ahead of the game,” said Andrew Orzehowski, one of Public Safety’s newer officers who attended the forum. “The best way to combat it, if you could, is education.” Rebecca Willoughby, an assistant professor of communications, was also in attendance.
She said, “I felt like there was good information disseminated at that meeting, but sometimes I feel like the people who most need to hear it either aren’t able to come or aren’t there.”
Willoughby added, “It was useful to me to know that there is a method to reporting a biased incident. Again, I want to see that information disseminated. They put how to respond during a university lockdown on the back of every office door. Give me a sign that says that.”
Willoughby also said that she felt the meeting was very helpful and that she hopes there is more of them because there is more work to be done.
