The April Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) elections contained a referendum question asking if Camosun students were in support of a funding increase to the Walksafer program; the vote did not reach quorum, so funding was not changed.
This is an issue for CCSS Student Services Coordinator Michael Glover. Glover, who runs the Walksafer program, says the funding was needed in order to provide the service without running a deficit. According to Glover, the Walksafer program provides much-needed safety to students on campus, as he feels security presence at Camosun is lacking.
“It’s like insurance—I hate paying for insurance, but if I need it, I’ll sure be glad it’s there,” says Glover. “Unfortunately, that probably describes the whole security problem here at Camosun overall. Anything security-wise is insurance, and hopefully we don’t need it, but if we do we are really going to need it, and that’s very hard to pay for during eight years of solid cuts.”
Glover says funding for campus security used to come from parking fees, before Camosun parking was contracted out to Robbins Parking. Glover says that CCSS and Camosun had a verbal agreement that parking fees would go toward bike infrastructure, showers, and college safety, an agreement he claims the college is no longer honouring.
“Yes, they had an agreement that was never written down; the student society did not write these things down,” says Glover. “But they had agreed to do this, and so they are morally obligated to do that. They do not see that that way and have not taken responsibility for that moral obligation, which I would say that they have.”
Camosun College interim Manager of Transportation and Parking Shannon Craig says that she can’t comment on this agreement, as it predates her time working at the college.
“Let’s take it back and take all that revenue and hire CUPE [union] workers to be security and parking attendants,” says Glover. “That way there will actually be some security, and, not only that, but security that the college hires, that they can manage, that would be superior to the guards that we were getting.”
Camosun College Manager of Campus Security Byron Loucks says that a physical security presence is extremely important to the college, and says that when you have a budget you have to use it to the best of your ability.
“So that’s what we’ve done,” says Loucks. “We use our assigned budget to the best of our abilities in order to be able to provide the best security based on the funding we’re provided.”
Loucks says that he would support having more security on campus, but says that, again, it all comes down to budget issues.
“If it was possible for us to have an improved security presence, of course I would support that,” says Loucks. “But again that is a question with respect to administration and their budget allowances with respect to the security, and how that works.”
Glover says that the college is focused too much on the wrong type of safety. (He also has concerns about the amount of security on campus; due to policy, Loucks could not comment on specifics.)
“Time and time again we see these guys being focused on earthquake security,” says Glover, “building security, structural security, all of these physical things, [instead of] people security, like in terms of anti-harassment. And that is a problem for the student society. It is actually a problem for the whole college.”
But despite Glover’s concerns, Loucks says that it is not the case that security is more focused on physical and structural issues than they are on the safety of the people on campus.
“To say that we are building focused and not person focused, I don’t even know what that means,” says Loucks. “So, basically, if he’s saying that we’re more concerned about protecting a building than people, well, that is ridiculous. Because if there aren’t people in the building, none of us have jobs.”