Interim George Washington University President Mark Wrighton announced in a letter on Thursday that the Board of Trustees has directed the university to equip specially trained GW Police Department officers with firearms.
Wrighton said the board has come to this decision “after more than a year of careful consideration and deliberation, review of safety data and best practices, and input from experts.”
He also said the board partly made this decision in response to “too many tragic instances of mass gun violence in communities and on college campuses.” He cited the recent shootings at Michigan State University and the University of Virginia and that there “have been more than 140 mass shootings already in 2023,” according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Wrighton also referenced the university’s setting in the middle of a densely populated city and how unarmed GWPD officers cannot respond to life-threatening incidents when weapons are involved. He said this reliance on other armed law enforcement unfamiliar with the campus could waste precious time during an emergency.
“When weapons are involved, minutes matter,” Wrighton wrote.
Wrighton’s letter also outlined how “only GWPD’s most highly qualified supervisory officers who have met specific training requirements, including formal police academy training and specialized firearms training, will be armed.” The university will also form a review board to provide more oversight of these training requirements.
In an interview with the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, Wrighton said that roughly 20 of about 50 GWPD officers would be armed with 9 mm handguns.
GWPD Chief James Tate also told the Hatchet that most of those officers would already have training on carrying firearms from when they worked in other police departments.
The university will also be working with a law enforcement consulting group called 21CP Solutions, according to Wrighton.
“21CP includes subject matter experts representing policy, academia, civil rights law, and police accountability, and includes former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey,” Wrighton said.
Wrighton also compared George Washington University’s security to other universities, including how “most comparable universities nationally and within the Washington metropolitan area are armed.”
The Hatchet reported that three D.C. universities have armed campus police officers: Howard and Catholic universities and the University of the District of Columbia. However, campus police officers at American, Gallaudet, and Georgetown universities remain unarmed.
In previous editorials, students encouraged the arming of officers before quickly noting broader opposition to the move.
“We assumed adopting a policy similar to that of peers like Northeastern, Tufts and Boston universities would grant GWPD the ability to respond rapidly to incidents like assaults, robberies or school shootings – the latter of which has been a paramount concern for students across the country,” the GW Hatchet’s Editorial Board wrote amid protests against George Floyd’s murder.
The student board also noted a significantly safer experience — the school remains settled in an area with fewer reported crimes than some parts of the District — but an alignment with efforts by the then-leadership of the school’s Black student union to avoid arming campus officers.
“In reality, the effect of armed campus policing would be overwhelmingly detrimental to the wellbeing of students of color at GW,” the board continued.
WTOP contacted the school’s Black Student Union for comment on Thursday’s announcement.
The university administration will now work on a proposed arming implementation plan for the Board to review in the spring, which Wrighton says will be guided by GW community engagement.
“We will launch an effort to gain community input and feedback on implementation, as well as other priorities for reimagining public safety at our university.”
