After more than a year of consideration, American University President Jonathan Alger has decided against arming the AU Police Department and maintaining the current status quo — where officers are equipped with pepper spray and Armament Systems and Procedures-manufactured batons, AU Board of Trustees Chair Gina Adams said in an email Tuesday.
The decision comes after a recommendation from the Security Review Working Group, which formed after AU announced it would launch a campus safety review that considered policing options following a shooting at Morgan State University in October 2023. Alger ultimately made the final decision based on the working group’s recommendation.
Alger presented the decision last week to the Board of Trustees, which supported the decision, Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Matt Bennett told The Eagle.
Student members of the working group developed and proposed the recommendation that opposed arming AUPD, which the entire group adopted, Chief Financial Officer, Vice President and Treasurer Bronté Burleigh-Jones told The Eagle.
“I would hope that people would be heartened by the idea that the students were very engaged in this process,” Burleigh-Jones said.
Burleigh-Jones said in an October 2023 email that the school would “collect extensive community input, consider potential updates and impacts, and ultimately report the findings to the AU Board of Trustees and the full community in the first part of the spring 2024 semester.”
In February 2024, the University extended the safety review period to fall 2024, due to “AU’s upcoming presidential transition and the challenging political and international issues that the AU community is currently grappling with,” according to Burleigh-Jones. The University stated in October that they would announce a final decision in early 2025.
The Security Review Working Group, made up of faculty, staff and students, undertook a “review of [AU’s] approach and infrastructure to ensure campus safety and security.”
The four options up for consideration were:
- Maintaining the status quo, where officers are equipped with pepper spray and ASP batons but not firearms
- Expanding the use of less-than-lethal weapons without firearms, including but not limited to tasers and rubber bullets
- Deploying firearms from police vehicles in threat situations involving weapons
- Arming all officers and supervisors
The working group held education sessions, community forums and a survey. Education sessions were hosted with higher education law enforcement experts, educators and researchers in September. Nine community forums were held in October and a University-wide survey to gather more input was conducted in early November.
While data from the survey gauging student support for the four proposals was not published with the announcement, Burleigh-Jones said the University is working through how the results will be communicated. Adams said the survey received more than 2,600 responses in the Tuesday email.
AUPD’s jurisdiction and authority
AUPD is a private police department licensed through the D.C. Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. AUPD partners with several other organizations including the Metropolitan Police Department, DC Fire and EMS, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. MPD is its main partner, but AUPD works with other federal and local agencies, such as the FBI, when necessary.
AUPD and the Office of Risk Management created a strategic plan in 2013 to address evolving security and risk management needs on campus, according to a presentation by Phil Morse, the chief of AUPD. The plan was revised and updated in 2017 and 2020.
MPD only dispatches officers when requested by AUPD or upon the victim’s request, according to the AU Annual Security Report and an MPD internal policy.
MPD is “tactically prepared to respond to an active assailant situation,” Matthew Verderosa, AU’s director of global safety and compliance, said at an education session in September. “Our officers will provide support and access to the Metropolitan Police upon their arrival on campus.”
In addition to annual security reports, the Clery Act of 1990 requires the University to keep a Daily Crime Log of every incident reported to AUPD or a public safety agency.
“We recognize that having armed police officers on a university campus or university property is not going to prevent gun violence or other types of violent crimes from occurring,” Morse said at an education session. “The most effective approach that we have is to deter and prevent violence from occurring in the first place.”
Students anticipate an arming announcement
The leadup to President Alger’s decision garnered a large response from students, many of whom opposed arming campus police. AU’s chapter of March for Our Lives held a protest against arming AUPD on Oct. 17.
Co-Director Waverly Zhao, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences, said she thought there are a lot of cons to arming AUPD, specifically for marginalized communities who have been targeted by police. But she said not everyone shared that view.
“For some students, they may say they might feel more secure on campus, but I think it’s a false sense of security because that’s not necessarily safe,” Zhao said.
She said she thinks the real issue is how many students were unsure of what to do when alerted about an armed individual on campus.
“We just need more awareness on our campus about what to do because I think there’s an assumption that we know what to do and it’s fine, but people just stayed in class or didn’t know how to respond,” Zhao said, referencing when campus was locked down in October.
Co-Director Alex Dillon, a sophomore in SPA, said he was “disappointed but not shocked” when he heard the University was considering arming AUPD.
The University held several forums, education sessions and created a working group that included five students throughout the decision-making process, but Dillon said he thinks student voices have still not been involved enough in these conversations.
“As they built the working group and kind of made these decisions, it’s all been done in secret,” Dillon said. “There’s been really no open deliberation outside of these very controlled, focus-group-type things. I think it’s really performative.”
During the fall 2024 Student Government elections, a referendum asked students which option currently being considered for arming AUPD they would prefer and whether they trust the department “to protect the safety of yourself, faculty, staff, and other students.”
About 44 percent of the students who voted said they trusted AUPD with their safety.
About 80 percent opposed arming AUPD with sidearms, while roughly 70 percent opposed putting firearms in police vehicles and a little under 60 percent voted against arming AUPD with less-than-lethal weapons.
“If they ignored that, that’s the most blatant showing of them just ignoring the will of the student body,” said Asher Heisten, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs who runs the Instagram account @dontarmaupd.
Arusa Islam, the president of SG and a student member of the Security Review Working Group, said that SG is in support of what the majority of the campus wants.
“AU is known for being Changemakers and learning how to become activists and advocates and I think it’s important that the administration keep that in mind,” she said.
One topic of debate during this decision is what would happen in the case of an active assailant on campus.
Luke Brown, a sophomore in SPA and the communications director and treasurer of AU College Republicans, was surprised to learn that AUPD was not already armed. Though Brown doesn’t think that a school shooting at AU is likely to happen, he thinks that arming AUPD would still improve campus safety.
“It’s imperative that police officers here have weapons because every second matters in something like a school shooting,” Brown said.
George Washington University began arming some of their police officers last year, though an investigation by The GW Hatchet, the university’s student newspaper, alleging gun safety violations and inadequate training led to the resignation of the police chief.
Faculty come together against possible arming
AU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a resolution on Feb. 14 against arming AUPD and the University’s use of armed MPD officers to monitor certain student protests.
The resolution cited six protests that occurred during the fall 2024 semester. Four of them were pro-Palestinian and garnered an armed MPD presence, while the other two were hosted by March for Our Lives or No More and It’s on Us where MPD was not present.
Bracht said he sees no pros to arming AUPD and sees it only as a “risk” to student safety. Instead, the University should prioritize students’ freedom of expression, though the First Amendment does not apply to AU as a private institution.
“We need to protect the right of students to protest,” Bracht said. “To me, that’s incredibly valuable. That’s part of the educational process. It’s part of us having a democracy.”
Bracht said it is “rare” that almost all faculty members take the same stance on an issue. However, he said this seems to be one of those cases, as about 9 in 10 members of AAUP voted “yes” on the resolution. Bracht said Alger should consider the unified voices of faculty and students when making his decision.
“Listen. And more than that, hear what’s being said. Because the community is speaking,” Bracht said. “They’ve given them the opportunity, the community is speaking. Listen to that input and hear that input."
Hestein said that he has lost some faith in the administration throughout this decision process because the student body has made their opinion clear, but that not arming AUPD is a “gesture of goodwill.”
“I think that the administration should be recognized for their decision not to arm AUPD and then continue to work with the student body and the staff and the faculty to get across the finish line of changing AUPD for the better,” Hestein said.
This article was edited by Owen Auston-Babcock and Tyler Davis. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Olivia Citarella.
