The response (by James L. Harrison) to a few statements I made in the Daily, are the exact reasons I fear arming DPS officers.

Most of my brothers and sisters are afraid, understand me, not concerned, actually afraid of having DPS officers running around with guns.

The issue is not whether or not I am law-abiding, which I take as a personal attack, or whether DPS officers are “real” policemen.

And realize that your pepper spray comment shows your own questioning of DPS as officers of the law.

Aren’t officers of the law supposed to be able to handle a situation without a gun?

Hmmm… how about talking out a problem before pulling a gun? Your doubts about pepper spray in DPS’s hands are magnified by about a thousand times when I picture a gun in place of the pepper spray.

I do not feel safe here and I probably never will. DPS-laden officers will decrease, not increase my feeling of safety.

Do you know what it feels like to be a black man looking for his car in a Towers parking lot and have a person, who happened to look out of his window, call DPS because “there was a suspicious black man in the parking lot?”

Do you know how angry and scared one feels when looking for their property and having DPS ride up to you asking “what are you doing here?” with their headlights in your face?

No, you probably don’t, because in this community it’s not a crime to be white, but it is to be black. You are guilty first and asked afterwards.

As far as I know, when this incident happened walking in a parking lot, looking for a car was not a crime.

But in this community it will be if you are black.

The person it happened to was so angry and hurt, but there was nothing he could do.

He was the wrong color in the wrong place.

I wondered at the time what would have happened had DPS had guns. I feared that my brother, friend, etc. would be shot first and asked later, “what are you doing here?”

And by the way, what makes you think you’re going to have someone hold a gun to your head on a campus like this?

Maybe YOU need to be here a little longer before you assume that crazed criminals are running around this campus.

Or maybe you have done something that someone would want to hold a gun to your head. I really don’t know, and I honestly don’t care.

What I do know is that arming DPS will not solve anything. Guns never guarantee peace, but they do guarantee violence.

Talk to some of the minority students on this campus; let them give you their opinion. You’ll find that most opinions are consistent with my own.

Oh, by the way, ask some of the students at SUNY Binghamton in New York how effective a can of pepper spray can be.

Guns are not the answer.

Yasmin Adelle Blackburn

Senior

English/History

Government of the Student Body

Senator