Police Officers Could be Added to FHU Campus
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HENDERSON, Tenn. – A bill making its way through the state legislature could make campus police a possibility for private colleges and universities throughout Tennessee. It is sponsored by West Tennessee lawmakers, and would expand the private universities and colleges that are permitted to have police forces. One of them includes Freed Hardeman University. Students there said they feel safe on campus, but some extra security never hurts. “We don’t have a lot of gates and fences to keep people off, but I feel fairly safe when I’m on campus,” said student Clay Leonard. “Henderson feels like a safe place though, too.” The university said it is exploring the idea of having a campus police department, to be proactive with safety. It would allow faster response time. “And that way when there’s incidents like we’ve had before, we don’t have to wait on the police, and a lot of people get interested and just start staring and they get distracted from what they should be doing,” said student Anna Hogan. “Currently, under the program that we have now, security will respond to a situation that may occur on campus, and we in turn would have to notify the local law enforcement,” said Rodney Weaver, Freed Hardeman’s Director of Safety and Security. Most students told WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News they want Freed to get its own police department – especially since it is so easy for just anyone to come onto campus. “We have a lot of what ‘Freedies’ call ‘Townies’ that come on our campus and they drive around and they can be pretty reckless, and Freed people don’t like it very much,” Hogan said. “I feel like if we had our own police department that it would be stopped.” Other students said they think current campus security is plenty. “I don’t think we need an on-campus police department because with the two ex-policemen having experience, I think that’s good enough, and if something happened, they would catch the people,” said student Caneisha Turner. University officials said if they were to get a campus police department, they would, of course, hire additional officers. Right now they do not know yet how much it would cost, or if it will impact students’ tuition.
