To coincide with the official deployment of sworn peace officers next month, UR has decided to officially change and re-brand UR Security as UR Public Safety.
While the addition of a new dimension of safety for students is a momentous occasion, we do not believe it warranted the frivolous spending that occurred to simply change the name of the organization.
The sight of the fleet of UR Public Safety cruisers with new decals, officers with new uniform patches, and other various instances of re-labeled inventory is troubling. These cosmetic changes lead us to believe a significant amount of money was wasted merely for the sake of a new name.
“The cost for these items due to the name change is in the $12,000 to $15,000 range in one-time costs,” Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance & Chief Financial Officer Ronald Paprocki said.
We find this amount of money spent to be egregious, especially for such a superficial and seemingly useless change.
The funds budgeted towards the name change could have been used for more officers, better wages, training, equipment, or campus outreach.
Instead, this money was used for what essentially is the re-labeling of an organization that retains the same mission and duty to UR as in the past, albeit with more power and responsibility.
To UR’s credit, the largest costs from the transition from Security to Public Safety came from training related expenditures, new equipment, and other much needed updates.
In regards to the transition overall, Paprocki said, “We believe that this has been an important investment to enhance the security of our campus.”
While we applaud UR’s efforts to improve the overall safety and security of our campus, there are some changes we could have gone without.
We hope that in the future, UR will allocate its budget towards the genuine improvement of campus safety rather than trivial initiatives such as name changes that result in no tangible benefit to the University community.
