James Riswick
Assistant A&E Editor
Over the years I’ve tried my best to get my columns in good and early. The article originally in this space was signed, sealed and delivered Sunday evening, and I was of the opinion that it was actually pretty good. I decided to take a break from discussing such vacuous topics as Lindsay Lohan, pop culture or international space stations to talk about something that was hitting close to home.
See, for the past few weeks, Pepperdine Public Relations had only been sending us eight Public Safety reports per week, and it certainly seemed to me that the Public Relations department was censoring which reports were being sent from Public Safety to the Graphic.
If this was the case then Pepperdine could have been violating Section 94380 of California State Education code, which states that every private university is required to compile records of all occurrences reported to police or campus authorities.
Withholding certain Public Safety reports would have been at the very least ethically underhanded and sneaky on Pepperdine’s part, and at the worst it was a crime worthy of being excluded from the reports.
Sure enough, however, when the DPS reports came into the Graphic newsroom Tuesday from Public Relations, there were, once again, several pages of reports. Public Relations officials commented that nothing has changed, as did DPS. So I had to quickly throw out this little piece of prose that has either held your interest, made you turn the page or has dropped you into a near-comatose state where you will stay until you wake up face down on the coffee table in a puddle of your own drool.
But I must soldier on, so on with the DPS-themed random thoughts.
This past week I was driving a different car as part of the Graphic’s new automotive review series. Subsequently, the new Scion tC press car I have been driving around doesn’t have a Pepperdine parking sticker. I wondered when I drove through the gates for the first time, “Do I drive through the ‘Permits Only’ side gate even though I technically don’t have the permit on this car?” The answer was ‘yes’ and perhaps not surprisingly no Public Safety mobile came busting after me.
One night, though, when the side “Permits Only” gate was closed, I stopped at the guard booth and felt compelled to politely inform the officer, “Just dropping a friend off at his dorm.”
The answer? “I don’t care.”
Well right on, buddy. I’m glad that the security booth is there to gallantly protect the school. I wonder if there would have been a different response had I yelled out, “Hey there, just got a couple of hookers in the trunk and under the floor boards some cocaine I’m going to sell to your students?”
Probably the same response I’m imagining, but I wonder what the response would have been had I been a minority in an older car? Just a thought.
Another Public Safety thought is why on Earth do they keep getting new cars every year?
Three years ago they had a fleet of brand-new Ford Escapes. Since then, all but one of those is gone having been inexplicably replaced by other Ford vehicles of various shapes and sizes — specifically the typical cop car, the Crown Victoria.
Regardless of the fact that I find it highly unlikely those Public Safety mobiles needed to be retired because they were racking up the miles orbiting campus all day, there are other automotive concerns to be considered. The Crown Vics and the various other trucks — including a gigantic Ford Expedition — suck gas.
Why do you need a huge V8-powered vehicle to drive around campus? Their job could easily be done with a fuel-efficient Ford Focus or heck, even a golf cart.
It seems like a tremendous waste of money and not very environmentally friendly considering the gas that must go into those cars.
Maybe by the time I put this into the editors, though, the gate will be more secure, the cars will be cut back and I’ll have to write my third column about them this week.
2-17-2005