The Calgary Police Service (CPS) provided security at MRU during a roughly 120 person anti-vax protest that took place on Oct. 28, but some students feel their own campus security should have been the ones in charge at the event.
Hope Guerin was one such student.While she respected the protestors’ right to gather, she felt that “it was disruptive to my studies. I know it was disruptive to a lot of other students.”
Guerin felt that campus security would have kept that noise level in mind more than CPS did.
When asked about the difference in opinion, Manesha Sidhu, the assistant manager for security services, highlighted a number of reasons why CPS was so involved, but the biggest was that the police regularly handle these protests around the city.
“They have a relationship already with the organizers who have been setting up these protests,” she said. “Which is a relationship that we don’t necessarily have.”
Sidhu also cited a number of other concerns, such as the safety of the campus officers if things did get violent, or the protest-specific training that CPS receives that MRU security does not.
For the time being, there are no current plans to change the way campus handles the protests, according to Sidhu.