La Voz

Issue date: 2/5/07 Section: Opinion

Left to right: Olga Ardulov, Loriza Sasur, Asif Ahmed, Thomas Guffey, Dan Sealana and Robert Erdei

If you knew the student sitting next to you in your Political Science class or in your club meeting might actually be an undercover police officer, you might feel a little uneasy.

That's exactly the situation students at California State University Fresno have found themselves in. According to a recent article in the Fresno Bee, CSUF's Academic Senate has been recently debating the increasingly evasive tactics police have been using to keep tabs on the campus.

According to the article, plain-clothes officers at CSUF often keep a close watch when controversial guest speakers, such as animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky, visit the campus.
We know how scary and violent those vegans can get.

The students of CSUF should be insulted that their campus police have decided to become their babysitters - all in the name of safety, of course.

Every student wants to feel safe on campus. But having undercover police officers roaming around campus creates an atmosphere of distrust, not safety.

Luckily, here at De Anza, there are no known plans to bring plain-clothes police officers into classrooms to babysit students or to install covert surveillance cameras around campus.

Although crime is pretty much inevitable on any college campus, we should all be proud that De Anza is safe enough that the police don't feel they have to constantly watch over our shoulders.

It is possible that the many squirrels on campus are not merely friendly rodents but, in fact, mini-spy androids remotely controlled from the basement of the Foodstore, but we doubt it.

Although Foothill-De Anza DistrictPolice are usually present whenever a planned event that draws large crowds takes place, the police are within plain sight. They don't insult our intelligence by wearing backpacks and pretending to be students.

The only place undercover officers would be very useful here at De Anza would be in the campus men's rooms. Maybe they'd finally be able to crack down on the people who insist on writing vulgar and racist graffiti in restroom.

Most importantly, maybe they'd be able to finally nail the creepy pervert who's been drilling holes in the bathroom stalls.

Unless CSUF has similar problems with bizarre bathroom shenanigans, their police should spend less time playing hide-and-seek in speaker events and more time keeping students safe from real criminals.

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