Oregon State Rep. Zach Hudson (D-49), House Higher Education Committee chair, has introduced legislation related to oversight of public university campus security officers. House Bill 2551 requires Oregon’s public universities to request and review disciplinary records from Oregon’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, or DPSST, for campus security applicants. These would include records from any previous law enforcement or security roles regulated by DPSST. The text also allows universities to use this information in hiring decisions.
Hudson’s bill was prompted by a Street Roots investigation that found a legal loophole exempting special campus security officers — public security officers unique to Oregon’s public universities — from the vetting, training, licensing and disciplinary processes DPSST must carry out for other security roles, including campus security officers at community and private colleges.
“It’s due to the reporting that you did when you broke this story,” Hudson told Street Roots. “It wasn’t something that was on anybody’s radar.”
READ MORE: Banned ex-cops patrol Oregon university campuses
As a result of the loophole — an indirect result of a 2015 law changing university governance structure — multiple former law enforcement officers who had been fired or banned for misconduct were hired as special campus security officers.
Under state law, DPSST sets a higher bar for law enforcement officers like police, corrections and liquor license officers than security officers, such as campus security officers directly employed by a community or private college or via a private contractor.
For example, a law enforcement agency like the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, or OLCC, will fire a public safety officer, and DPSST will permanently ban them from future public safety work if it finds they engaged in qualifying actions, including abuse, sexual misconduct, hate crimes or dishonesty. The same actions would only result in a four-year ban for a security officer regulated by DPSST and prevent an aspiring security officer from obtaining a security license for four years.
However, special campus safety officers don’t fall into either category. They are exempt from any centralized state oversight — vetting, training, licensing and disciplining — by DPSST or another state agency despite being public employees with law enforcement authority, including making probable cause arrests without a warrant and enjoying the “accompanying immunities” of police officers.
Local laws sometimes combine with the state loophole to allow special campus security officers to conduct law enforcement activities off campus.
The lack of oversight means DPSST could enact a lifetime ban on a fired former law enforcement officer one day, and a university could hire them the next day as a special campus security officer with arrest and citation authority. While the Legislature recently required universities to conduct a criminal background check and psychological evaluation for special campus security officer candidates, universities still set their own standards for vetting, training, licensing and disciplining special campus security officers.
‘High-quality, well-trained security officers’
Hudson’s bill addresses the vetting component of the loophole identified by Street Roots’ investigation by requiring university staff to request and review DPSST records when making hiring decisions. With DPSST discipline records in hand, university staff would continue making hiring decisions based on their own standards.
“I think with more information, they’ll be able to make better decisions about who is an appropriate candidate, but that would continue to rest with the universities,” Hudson said. “All the feedback I’ve gotten from the universities is of course that they want high-quality, well-trained security officers who will do a good job at not only enforcing rules but engaging with students in an appropriate, professional manner.”
With these records in hand, universities may have decided against the previous hiring of ex-law enforcement officers with a lifetime ban from public safety work from DPSST. For example, Southern Oregon University, or SOU, may have avoided hiring Matthew Roberts. At the time he was hired in March of 2018, DPSST documents from October 2017 show that he was fired from OLCC in October of 2016 for violating its use of force and dishonesty standards after he attacked someone he alleged was a minor in possession of alcohol and then was dishonest about his behavior to his superiors. Two months after being hired at SOU, DPSST permanently banned Roberts from working as a public safety officer due to his dishonesty. SOU still employs Roberts in this capacity, the university confirmed.
Roberts is also a former Medford City Council candidate who ran mainly on an anti-homeless platform after his Facebook-based “Greenway Recovery Project” group successfully pressured the city to pass an ordinance criminalizing homelessness — a campaign that his SOU timesheets show he partially orchestrated while on the job.
Some students are not convinced the bill does enough to keep them safe. Arthur is a junior at SOU active in LGBTQIA2S+ organizing on campus who requested to use only his first name out of fear of retaliation. He’s concerned that nothing prohibits universities from hiring ex-law enforcement officers with a lifetime ban from law enforcement, he said.
“It’s good that attention is being brought to this, but it’s not enough just to say that we’ll review disciplinary (records) and then leave (hiring decisions) up to the school because too often, people with a history like that will slip through the cracks if it’s left up to just the people around them,” Arthur said.
Beyond concerns around the lack of uniform standards, a review of state regulations and conversations with DPSST staff reveals that Hudson’s legislation would continue exempting special campus security officers from DPSST oversight. This may undermine its efforts to ensure universities and DPSST-regulated security agencies have the information they need to hire qualified applicants.
House Bill 2551 requires universities to obtain DPSST records, which are primarily generated in two ways. First, DPSST-regulated security and law enforcement agencies must notify DPSST when an officer is terminated for behavior that may violate state rules. DPSST will then investigate the potential violation and determine what, if any, discipline is required. Second, anyone can submit a complaint about a DPSST-regulated security or law enforcement officer. DPSST will investigate the complaint and determine what, if any, discipline is required. In both cases, if DPSST determines the behavior warrants a suspension or revocation of their license, DPSST then updates the officer’s standing on a public website.
Universities do not contribute to either type of record-keeping because special campus security officers are exempt from DPSST oversight. As a result, universities do not notify the state when a special campus security officer is terminated, no entity determines whether the behavior of a terminated special campus security officer warrants suspension from future work as a special campus security officer, and no record of the behavior that led to the termination would exist outside of the university as long they are terminated for a non-criminal offense like dishonesty or abusing their law enforcement authority.
Furthermore, special campus security candidates are not subject to disclosure requirements for DPSST-regulated security and law enforcement candidates. DPSST-regulated security applicants must disclose whether they have engaged in dishonesty or deceit, sexual or drug-related misconduct, destruction of property, illegal use of a deadly weapon, or violence, abuse or neglect against a person or animal. If they indicate engagement in these violations, DPSST may conduct a review that could include requesting records from past employment to determine whether they qualify for licensure. Law enforcement applicants must disclose more extensive information, which a law enforcement agency uses to make hiring decisions in coordination with employment records that the agency must obtain during the background investigation of candidates.
‘Students should have a chance to say what they want’
“I think everyone agrees on the need for a bill like this, and people are really happy with what we put together,” said Hudson. He crafted the bill alongside SOU and Portland State University, or PSU, administrators and ran the language by DPSST staff.
“Portland State supports the bill,” Katy Swordfisk, PSU media relations manager, said. “We look forward to working with Rep. Hudson in the upcoming legislative session in supporting this bill.”
SOU did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.
Despite concerns voiced by students during Street Roots’ investigation, Hudson said he did not solicit student feedback.
“I think students should have a chance to say what they want to on the bill,” Tiana Gilliland, SOU student body president, said. Gilliland, who said SOU administrators recently briefed the student government on the bill, met Hudson once and thinks he would be willing to hear what students say.
For Gilliland, the legislation could benefit from requiring universities to establish review panels for special campus security officer candidates to adequately consider whether “uncomfortable circumstances” from past jobs should disqualify a candidate.
The matter was more straightforward for Arthur: no one with a history of abuse, violence or dishonesty should be allowed to patrol universities, community colleges or private colleges.
“All of them should be held to the same standard,” Arthur said. “The thought of having someone like that in a position of power over me or anyone else in the student body is terrifying.”
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This article appears in January 22, 2025.