The three colleges have shared a director for many years, and Hampshire and Mount Holyoke consolidated last year. The addition of Smith this year will allow the police to significantly reduce their budget by having common trainings.
“We reduced costs by cross-training everyone on the three campuses,” said Barbara Arrighi, Associate Director of Public Safety at the three colleges. “We wouldn’t have to reproduce all the things that we do on each campus. We’d do it on one campus, so there’s a real saving on all the things that we do having it done as one unit as opposed to three campuses doing it on their own. It’s a much more efficient way of operating if you’re all working in the same direction.”
The changes will not negatively impact student security and may even increase the available forces in the case of an emergency.
“We’re planning to do central dispatching, which means that dispatch center will be at Mount Holyoke for all three campuses,” Arrighi said. “Ninety-nine percent of our calls come in by telephone. People don’t tend to come into the public safety office to report, so that would be no different than what it has always been. The difference would be is that we now have a larger employee pool should there be an emergency.”
Amherst, however, is not looking to join this consolidation, according to Chief of Campus Police John Carter.
“Each and every opportunity for Five College Collaboration is thoroughly vetted to determine foremost if it will maintain core services and secondarily to determine if it is a fiscally sound venture,” said Carter. “The consolidation of public safety forces ... is contradictory to the basic tenets of community policing and is based on predictive salary and overtime reductions dependent on a surplus staffing model.”