Roy Exum
Vanderbilt, known for its high academic standards and its ever-struggling football team, smacked me in my funny bone the other day when university officials, surely straining to keep a straight face, announced they have just created a SWAT team.
At the very same time Tennessee officials were bemoaning the lack of higher-education funding in the governor’s new budget, the state’s most hallowed private university came out to say it has just purchased a mobile command center, tactical weapons and armored uniforms for the campus police force.
This spring my daughter promises she will receive her master’s degree from Vanderbilt, this after a glorious experience in getting her under-graduate degree at the wonderful school, and I cannot recall any mention of terrorists on the Nashville campus except on certain Saturday afternoons when marauders from other Southeastern Conference schools would come to let loose football havoc on her beloved Commodores.
The fact that the Vanderbilt campus is located in downtown Nashville seems like adequate protection, with the able Metro police force within a whistle away, but in an article that appeared in a recent issue of the Nashville Tennessean, Vanderbilt’s police chief, Marlon Lynch, said, "We do understand that (Metro) has a responsibility to the city of Nashville and Davidson County. We have a responsibility to Vanderbilt University, and we need to be able to maintain a certain level of public safety."
While not wishing to make light of terrorism elsewhere in the world, about the last place in the world I would ever suspect a mad bomber would be in Kirkland Hall. As a matter of fact, if a fabled criminal like “The Jackal” ever wanted to hide, he would be able to blend in at Vanderbilt in a way that would make the art of camouflage a new doctorial degree.
The newspaper article, admitting that SWAT teams on college campuses are “rare,” revealed that Vanderbilt has approximately 100 sworn officers to ensure the safety of 11,800 students.
By comparison there are 50 such officers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for its 26,400 students and, at Middle Tennessee in Murfreesboro, there are 30 officers to safeguard those 23,000 students. Obviously neither UT nor MTSU has a SWAT team.
Now I’m all for public safety, especially at a place my daughter goes to school, but for Vanderbilt to equip itself with a mobile command center and automatic rifles seems a little much. Further, I don’t exactly think this is what “Commodore Cornelius” had in mind when he came up with the seed money to found the university back in 1873.
Maybe I am being naive, but the only time I can envision the mobile command center rolling will be in the Homecoming parade and then only after the Chi Omegas or the Phi Deltas doll that baby up real well in black-and-gold bunting.
I’ll be the first to admit I know very little about running a university, but this is a case of over-kill if I have ever seen it. Get this: if several of Vanderbilt’s officers, duly equipped with automatic 40-caliber pistols, can’t quell a situation, then the best advice would be to call in Nashville’s finest with all of its force and expertise.
I have long held the opinion Vanderbilt has groomed some of the finest minds in the country and I glory in the genteel air that seems to linger over the campus, but when armored cars and assault rifles start showing up, something seems to have gotten a few inches off plumb.
Since 9/11 we have not been attacked by terrorists, thank the Lord above, but I long for the days when we don’t have to show off our police might, or take off our shoes before we board an airplane, or spend thousands of dollars that I feel would be put to far-wiser use in a chemistry lab or a library computer.
SWAT teams are gruesome things. This isn’t to say the brave men and women who make them aren’t among our finest heroes and when might is deemed necessary it should be swift and sure. But for somebody to find one necessary at a school like Vanderbilt better not dilute my daughter’s next diploma or else we just might take somebody hostage, which is something at dear ole Vandy that would evermore be a first.
royexum@aol.com