After making several security improvements around campus in the last year, Harding’s Public Safety is now investigating the possibility of having police on campus.
Currently, the university employs 10 armed security guards and will install another during this school year. As a result of this new armed security guard, Director of Public Safety Craig Russell said Harding will be very close to having two armed guards on duty every shift.
There are, however, no police on campus. The opportunity for Harding to employ police officers on campus is due to legislation that passed in the spring and went into effect on Aug. 16. The legislation merely permits private universities to have their own police forces.
The administration has not come to any conclusions regarding this possibility. According to Russell, one of the key differences if Harding were to make use of this opportunity would be the training.
“Police academy training is 12 to 13 weeks long, and access to that would be an enormous benefit to our department,” Russell said.
However, according to Russell, there is no rush to implement anything new just yet. The cost of adding a police force to campus has not yet been determined, and according to Russell, they are still some time away from being able to present an official proposition to Harding president Bruce McLarty.
Over the past year, Harding has made several updates in its security and safety measures, including new and updated security cameras and additional crosswalks and stop signs.
“With the new brick crosswalks and stop signs, one thing of concern to us was keeping foot traffic safe,” Russell said. “We had lots of people involved in that discussion because we have to coordinate it with the city because they are city streets.”
In the last year, Public Safety has put security cameras in all of the new buildings as well as replacing outdated cameras in the GAC and Harding Academy.
“Technology has just changed,” Russell said. “The HD cameras didn’t exist or were too expensive when we first began using security cameras. Now the cost has come down as well as the cameras becoming a lot better, a lot higher quality.”
