Note: This story appeared in our April Fools Distorter issue and is for comedic value only.
by James Caroll
Last Monday, Public Safety announced that it would be issuing umbrellas as standard equipment to all of its officers. This decision was made in the wake of the last month’s “Umbrella Incident”, in which the RIT campus was locked down after an umbrella was sighted on campus.
Currently, the plan is to equip each officer on campus with one umbrella to use while on duty. The umbrellas are military-grade, made of reinforced steel and have a padded handle to increase longevity. The process of distribution should take approximately one week to complete and will cost the Institute $5,000, which will be covered by a marginal increase to student tuition. The umbrellas are designed for a variety of uses, from simple defense to crowd control. Talks of retrofitting Public Safety Segways with state-of-the-art umbrella holsters are still ongoing, though many have voiced concerns that this would add incentive to the increasingly common Segway hijackings across campus.
Director of Public Safety Chris Derringer commented on the logic of this action. “The most effective way to prevent crime is to maintain a strong presence on campus,” he said in a public statement Tuesday. “If one umbrella could put the campus into lockdown, imagine what the entire force equipped with raingear could do.” President George Haddock of Student Government shot back at Derringer later that day. “This was an outlandish decision on the part of Public Safety,” he stated. “We do want them to have a presence on campus, but this is too far. Many students already have a lot of stress in their academic lives; they don’t need additional anxiety from constantly seeing officers armed with umbrellas.”
This Saturday, Public Safety will be holding a public meeting to address the issue. Derringer invites all those who have an opinion on the matter to come and let their voices be heard. The meeting will be held on the second floor of Chartreuse Hall (CSH, 19), room 2345, from 1-2 a.m..
