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SUNY Potsdam not doing enough for student safety

Posted 12/16/15

To the Editor: My name is Alexis Smith and I am a senior at SUNY Potsdam and I must say I have been nothing but impressed with how the school is run. I help run three different clubs here on campus …

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SUNY Potsdam not doing enough for student safety

Posted

To the Editor:

My name is Alexis Smith and I am a senior at SUNY Potsdam and I must say I have been nothing but impressed with how the school is run.

I help run three different clubs here on campus and enjoy all my classes. But due to recent situations here on campus, I feel as though things have not been taken into enough consideration for the student body.

I am referring to the third hate letter the school has received. I feel as though a large majority of our campus has been threatened by the details of this letter, and one of the problems is no one knows exactly word for word what it says. Many students would rather see classes canceled and everyone sent home but as I am sure, the administration would prefer not to do so (just gathered from the lack of what has already been done).

As you probably already know, the ethnic people are not a minority on this diverse campus and they should be respected with every respect as everyone else. We are a family type community here at Potsdam and we cannot keep going on about our lives as if half of our family is scared for their safety.

Now I myself have offered to be a volunteer at the night guide program you have reestablished due to the current threats, but I do not see that it is enough. Nor does upping the campus police force. Yes it helps but it does not seem to have any effect on how the student body feels. Being a part of night guide, I got to sit in the office where I heard multiple parents call in to find out what was going on because the administration is trying to keep everything hush-hush.

But it seems to just be fueling the fire by not telling them what is going on. If you have not noticed, there has been more protests going on in the past few days than should be. There are professors who refuse to talk about what is going on with their students and professors who have no clue. All I’m trying to say is maybe if you step up and take some more action, the students would not be so scared and requesting for transfers. You are going to lose a lot of enrollment if this is not carried out in the right way.

I suggest releasing the letter and its contents and assuring the student body that they do not need to fear walking around our campus. Many teachers I have being a criminal justice student, have already begun talking about calling off classes and just doing things for the next few weeks and having the final online, but who is to say that students wont be stuck here for gen-ed finals or for those majors who are not politically active during this situation.

Personally, I have not been on campus unless I have to be and I too see a threat in what has been going on. If something were to happen and it comes up that you as an administration have not done anything helpful to the situation there will be a lot less students to worry about next semester. I have heard students say things like “My parents are not going to pay for me to come to a school who does not care if we are safe;” “I feel as though they are not taking this seriously, if this was Canton they would have put the campus on lock down;” “We’re going to a school that actually cares about threats like this, the letter said “its the last warning””, and much more.

We as students and our parents have left our matters in your hands. It’s up to you to make the moves in a direction to keep these students safe while we are here. Please take all of this in to consideration and figure out what is a better way to handle this situation then what is being done now.

Alexis Smith

SUNY Potsdam student