Students activists at Georgetown University are petitioning the school’s president to allow its campus police force to bear arms, according to a Tuesday report.
GU Advocates for Responsible Defense, a group of around two dozen students, asked the Washington, D.C., university’s President John DeGioia to allow his campus police to carry more than batons and pepper spray, reported The College Fix.
“A properly trained and equipped police force will not foreclose the possibility of an active shooter,” the advocates’ letter reads. “But our focus must be deterrence, prevention, and, as a last resort, interruption, using lethal force if necessary.”
“Dylan Roof, the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting, had originally intended to target a college campus but changed targets after learning that the school had armed security,” group member T.J. Collins told The Fix.
Collins thinks the campus police should also receive training pertaining to drug use, intoxication, and sexual assault. Not all Georgetown students are on board with the proposal.
Georgetown students Jawad Pullin, Ari Shapiro, and Emma Vahey called the notion “risky at best and lethal at worst,” in campus paper The Hoya. The students suggested that arming police would exacerbate their racial discrimination.
University spokesman Matt Hill told The Fix that the school is reviewing the students’ petition. The school uses “the same model” as American University and George Washington University, he said.
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