“Maximize Mizzou,” one of the two slates running for Missouri Students Association president and vice president this month, wants to prioritize student safety.
Vice-presidential candidate Daniel “Danny” Daugherty discussed the slate’s specific plans to increase safety for MU students.
Reporter Savvy Sleevar (SAV): The increases in off-campus violence in the city of Columbia have made many students feel unsafe. [How] does your administration plan to make students feel safe both on and off campus?
MSA Candidate Danny Daugherty (DAN): What we want to focus on when it comes to [students’] life off campus is that it’s more of an extension of the Mizzou experience. Mizzou is not Mizzou without Columbia, and Columbia is not Columbia without Mizzou … Students should be able to feel safe both on and off [campus]. What we’ve been focusing on when speaking with [the MU Police Department] is that they’re not just campus police; they also collaborate with [the Columbia Police Department] as well. Although there are students that will share negative [perspectives about] police, we still want students to be able to call somebody if they are in need of help. [So], what we really want to focus on with the student safety platform is doing more town halls, [having a more] open communication with [police] and letting people know that if you need help, you do have somebody to call.
Here, Daugherty mentioned the “Good Samaritan Law,” which ensures that police will help someone who calls 911 and is in danger, even if they are participating in illegal activities, such as underage drug and alcohol possession.
SAV: In that vein, many students feel that [MU] fails to properly alert them [when violent activity] does occur off campus. How will your slate, if elected, work with MUPD and administration to ensure that students do feel properly informed when it comes to their off-campus safety?
DAN: We want to work with MUPD [and] their communications team to make sure that we’re at a healthy balance [between] what students want to hear and what non-students [do] not want to hear. A really big issue that’s going on with MU Alert is that every couple of years, [alerts] will slide back and forth on the scale of way too many alerts … [to] not enough alerts … Finding that healthy middle ground is what MUPD kind of struggles with a little bit, and I feel like further collaboration with the student body and with the university might be able to [aid] that issue.
SAV: Speaking to MU’s diverse array of identities, I wonder what measures [Maximize Mizzou] plans to put in place to effectively protect the most vulnerable student populations at MU from incidents like sexual harassment and hate crimes.
DAN: [Something] that we’ve been looking at is making sure that MSA has a really strong network of student groups. A lot of people within those student groups that are identity-based have a really great perspective on what students are looking for when it comes to supporting those areas … We want to make sure that we are establishing really good groundwork with those [identity-based] groups to make sure that they can come to MSA with [any concerns] … Also, I think that MSA can work really tightly with existing campus resources [like the Office of Institutional Equity] and promote more [education] on “what does it look like to prevent sexual assault?”, “what does it look like when people report a hate crime?” … Once more students can acknowledge and identify when those issues are arising, I think [it] will be way easier for us to combat [those issues].
SAV: Looking at safety in terms of student health, [could you] describe the impact your slate would want to have on MU’s COVID-19 policy if elected?
DAN: Yeah, so we actually already passed a piece of legislation [as MSA legislators]. Me and Sami both co-wrote it, and basically the piece was mandating that the current president [of MSA, Landon Brickey] was to assemble some type of task force … to highly, highly recommend that our student body needs a better mask policy. We do not need a request, we need a mandate. [Mizzou has] students from literally across the entire globe. And when travel is involved with anything, COVID-19 rates are going to be more highly affected … If we are assuming those [MSA executive] positions next semester, [we] would like to keep students as safe as possible.
When it comes to Maximize Mizzou’s efforts to improve student safety, Daugherty said it is important to recognize that “institutional change is incremental.”
Considering the broad definition of student safety, both slates in the 2022 executive campaign are unable to make their goals too lofty if they want to avoid broken campaign promises. Further, measuring student safety in the first place is a difficult task. To make tangible progress on this issue, Maximize Mizzou will need to rely on frequent student feedback and, as Daugherty suggests, an emphasis on raising the standard for safety for those who feel the most unsafe first.
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Edited by Emmet Jamieson | ejamieson@themaneater.com