Security at Event Excessive
On Friday, April 27th, a local organization held an event. The University of Maine at Farmington's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy put on a concert in coordination with UMF's Spring Fling, a week long organization of events. The concert was held in the Fitness and Recreation Center on-campus, from midnight to 3AM. There was reasonable debate before the concert was put on about security and what would be the best option. Other members of SSDP and I really saw no need for the excessive amount of security Campus Safety wanted us to have, but when braced with an ultimatum of having the event with plenty of security or not having the event at all, we decided to put it on with the amount of security Campus Safety deemed necessary.
Not to my surprise, a day before the concert, I received word that Campus Safety was going to have the Farmington Police Department bring their K-9 Unit. There were at least five police officers at this event and no more than sixty to seventy people attending. Separate security included student security and campus safety. In my opinion, this is extremely excessive. To my knowledge, two women were summonsed for possession of cannabis and one man was arrested for public intoxication.
Campus Safety has no defined security policy and hence never really has to specify how much security will be anywhere. I am an out-of-stater from Rhode Island, but going to school in Maine has made me realize how much Mainers value their civil rights and liberties. This event sent a message to me and many of the members of my organization that slowly but surely those civil right and liberties are being stripped away from us one by one and the biggest proponents are the Drug War and the impeding police state. Please, citizens, realize what the federal government is doing to us every day. Wake up.
Mike Simpson
President
University of Maine at Farmington's Students for Sensible Drug Policy
Monday, May 7, 2007
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3 comments:
hey mike, the truth there is no one to protect us when our protection attacks. our policies are invasive and our lack of attention to detail is disgusting as a civilization. Bad luck on the lame event man, hopefully for our sake this bull shit will be over but as we know there's a large likely hood that we'll get hosed and actually have to move to canada for our freedom. oh well. see you in toronto eh? take it easy.
Thanks Evan, unfortunately, I feel like Canada won't be much of an escape in the next few years;
SPP.gov
Thanks for writing this.
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