Students Say Police Disconnected from Campus Sexual Violence

By Addison Smith and Riley Beihl

PITTSBURG, Kansas—Some students at Pittsburg State University say campus police are disconnected from the student body—especially when it comes to reporting cases of sexual violence to the University Police Department.

One PSU student, Vincent Norman, said campus police minimized their sexual harassment experiences when it came to reporting several incidents of harassment to UPD.

“They did listen to me, and we talked to them for a while, but afterwards they didn’t really do anything,” he said. “They never followed up with me when they said they would.”

The Gender and Sexuality Alliance organization also experienced this disconnect in an interaction with campus police after an incident last semester at its Gender Resource Center, or GRC, located in the PSU’s Axe Library basement. A group of male students had made harassing comments towards them in the GRC room. GSA President Wren Lowery said campus police disregarded the situation.

“They minimized the situation, which was really frustrating because we told them that we would like to give a statement, we would like to make a report, and [the officer] pretty much said that there was nothing he could do and suggested we were blowing things out of proportion,” Lowery said. “These students felt very afraid, and their feelings should have been validated.”

Another campus organization, Students for Violence Prevention, or SVP, is one resource PSU students have been utilizing to report these incidents. To further develop a more postivive connection, SVP has partnered with campus police in the past to bring awareness to sexual violence and provide resources to help aide students dealing with such incidents.

“Having no campus victim advocate is saying that survivors almost don’t deserve to have somebody on their side.”
Gender and Sexuality Alliance President Wren Lowery

— Gender and Sexuality Alliance President Wren Lowery

Currently, SVP does a domestic violence and human trafficking table with the leadership project seminar students. This event allows students to ask questions and bring awareness to these issues. The last table had 50 students in attendance. However, the amount of domestic violence clients seen through the SVP still doubled from four to eight between the 2019-2020 and the 2020-2021 school years.

Up until the end of the fall 2021 semester, SVP provided students reporting access to a 24/7 campus victim advocate. Stephanie Spitz had been on campus for three years before leaving for a job in Kansas City. Prior to Spitz’ departure, Pittsburg State University had found the funds to have two victim advocates on campus.

Now, five months later, Pittsburg State University has still yet to fill this role on campus. Spitz assisted 145 clients in the 2020-2021 school year alone. But many students now wonder when these funds will be used to at least hire one victim advocate back onto campus.

Many students say they’re concerned there’s no advocate on campus currently, and they say this only furthers their disconnect with campus police.

“I am very concerned for those 140 people and anyone else who may be experiencing violence still that now don’t have that resource on campus,” said Tiffany Demoss, a current graduate assistant in SVP.

“I think it’s very disempowering,” said Lowrey, who is also an SVP student coordinator. “Not having a campus victim advocate means that there’s not somebody who’s willing to say, ‘I believe survivors.’ From my perspective, I feel that as though having no campus victim advocate is saying that survivors almost don’t deserve to have somebody on their side.”

Campus police say they have tried to make themselves more welcoming to the general student population by remaining involved in the PSU campus such as connecting with students at PSU tailgates and as they walk campus daily. One specific event UPD puts on each year on the first Wednesday of October is Coffee with a Cop.

Stu Hite, UPD chief, said this event has proved to be a great way to connect with PSU students.

“We take every opportunity we can to engage with students, faculty, and staff on our campus,” Hite said. “I want to do all those kind of events we can and hope that the campus really appreciate why we do that. One of my main goals here is to make sure people understand and realize we’re here to help. We don’t want you to steer away from us.”

This event, celebrated each year on National Coffee with a Cop Day (first Wednesday of October), offers students free coffee and bagels with the help of Einstein Bros and Sodexo and gives them an opportunity to ask university police questions they may have been reluctant to ask in other situations.

But students still feel there is a disconnect between themselves and the UPD, regardless of the student turnout at events like these. Although many students appreciate the UPD’s engagement with them on campus, many still feel hesitant to bring certain issues to them due to recent negative experiences.

Hite isn’t sure why, saying his officers are there when students need support.

“In my interactions with students, my officers’ interactions, as well as random review of their body camera footage, I see a much different situation,” Hite said. “I see professionals doing everything they can to support, assist, and aid our PSU students in any way possible.”

In order to continue to bridge this gap of disconnection between UPD and students all across campus, GSA and SVP both believe PSU should begin to integrate mandatory campus diversity training across faculty and administration. Currently campus police are required to do 40 hours of mandatory specialized training each year which includes training in implicit bias awareness and training specific to issues like these through the state training academy.

Hite said he would be more than willing to look into how campus level training would benefit the students and community of Pitt State.

In any case, Vincent Norman said after his experiences with campus police, any action taken needs to be substantive.

“I think the [university police] want the campus to look good and they want it to look like there’s less issues and that our campus is a safe place,” Norman said. “But by trying to push these [issues] under the rug and kind of handle them discreetly, it’s having the opposite effect and making campus more unsafe.”