Let’s be honest here; you aren’t completely safe anywhere. Even in the comfort of your own bedroom you still aren’t totally secure. But evening after evening, you still relax there. Night after night, you still sleep there. And, morning after morning, you find that you’ve woken up again.
The same goes for El Camino. Yes, threats against EC were made. And yes, there was recently an officer-involved shooting on campus. But does that make EC dangerous, or less safe than any other college campus? The answer is a clear, a definite “no”.
It is perfectly legitimate to be worried about EC’s safety after James Lemus’ threats last semester and the officer-involved shooting which put suspect Peyton Dingman in the ICU just a few weeks ago. In fact, it is healthy.
Public scrutiny of the administration’s practices after these shake-ups can only help strengthen EC’s safety standards. But EC is not a den of thieves: it is far from it. El Camino is, in fact, among the safer colleges in the Los Angeles area.
According to Clery Act crime statistics, in 2013 EC reported 14 total criminal offenses. Pierce College reported 16, while Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, Cerritos College and East Los Angeles College all reported 21.
And while details of the officer-involved shooting during the first week of this semester remain unclear, it is important to remember these two things: it is a first shooting to occur on campus in six years, and that no students other than Dingman were physically harmed.
Of course, a need for reform still remains. Issues about the lack of transparency with regards to campus officials and police, as well as the police’s failure to alert the community in a timely fashion following Lemus’ threats last semester – itself a violation of the Clery Act’s requirement to keep students alerted to security threats – must be addressed in favor of transparency.
The fact that some things around campus needs to be fixed can not be denied, and shouldn’t be. In fact, students and faculty ought to be scrutinizing safety procedures at EC with a level head in order to ensure that EC remains a safe campus. But unreasonable paranoia is not the way to fix them and is not the way to foster a safe campus environment.
