There is nothing more loathsome than a group of professionals using their power to obstruct justice for the very people they have been entrusted to protect. Yet, this is the very thing that employees of the Department of Public Safety did around six in the afternoon on Sunday, May 27, 2018. In my quest to educate myself on the law, I enrolled in an online Political Science class, and have spent many weekends/evenings at the Pepperdine University Law School Library. Before going to the law school library, I checked on their website and it states that the law school is open to the public. I also checked in with the front gate security each time I came in and out, getting a visitor pass. They were aware of the reason for my visits as I explicitly told them, as was the library staff. The library staff was helpful, helping me to find every resource that I needed on Family Law and other topics. However, the Department of “Public Safety,” an all-boys club, didn’t measure up. It is not campus police, but rather a department invented to create an image of maintaining a safe campus. They stopped me many times on campus and questioned me, asking me irrelevant questions such as “What are your studying?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Why did you get a restraining order?” which they had no business of asking. All they could legally ask me is what business I had being there. Instead, they used it as an opportunity to harass me. Why would employees of a Public Safety Department do that to a college-educated woman who is trying to learn about the law and studying for exams? Because that is what harassers in the business of cover-ups do.
After an incident in which I had to contact them because someone was following me on campus, they told me that I was no longer welcome on campus. They escorted me off campus as if I had violated a campus law. Was this written on paper? No. Why were they going against university policy that was stated in print on the website? Because they are draconian officials, corrupting their use of power to intimidate people. They were commands given to me from men entrusted to protect college students and faculty, yet I had posed no direct threat. Did I have a weapon on campus? No. Did I threaten anyone with harm? No. Did I continue following someone even after they told me to stop? No. Yet they stated that they had never had such an incident such as mine on campus, which I find very unlikely. They simply did not like that I called for help, and didn’t like that I asked for the police to get involved.
So, the next time you are on their pristine campus, remember that they kicked a UC college–educated woman with no criminal record who was studying the law off their campus and ask yourself what type of university does this? If they do this to me, what do they do with the drunk college frat boys who do pose a threat to college security? Although I never applied to the University, opting to attend secular, public and private schools, I know they will never be placed on one of my all-time lists of places I would like to study law at. Would you want to study at an institution like this?
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