Temple students protest campus safety problems in the wake of an officer’s killing

Students concerned about safety around Temple University’s campus in the wake of a police officer’s killing held a protest and march Tuesday afternoon, calling on the school’s leaders to keep them better informed about crime and to take more action to protect students.

“Keep us safe,” senior John Mangan yelled into a megaphone outside Temple’s main administration building, as students with him followed with, “Temple U.”

The protest was called by Keep Us Safe Temple University, a student group started last fall by Mangan, a Doylestown area finance major, after he became concerned about fellow students who were victims of armed robberies and home invasions in the areas surrounding campus. Mangan said the university has not been transparent about all the crimes in the area and needs a better plan for dealing with them.

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“We are not asking Temple to solve violence,” Mangan, 22, said. “We are asking Temple to do their due diligence in keeping students safe … Do what they can to fix our piece of the puzzle in this nationwide crisis.”

The protest comes 10 days after Temple Police officer Christopher Fitzgerald was shot to death near campus. Eighteen-year-old Miles Pfeffer, of Bucks County, has been charged in his death.

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Temple has said it has taken steps to improve security, including expanding its walking escort service and shuttles, conducting an audit of cameras and launching a program to encourage landlords to improve lighting and security. In the last month, it held two town halls for students on safety.

But Temple also has acknowledged difficulty in hiring more police officers; it has fewer officers now than it did in the weeks after student Samuel Collington’s killing near campus in 2021, despite a pledge by Temple president Jason Wingard at that time to boost the force by 50%. The school has said it will welcome eight new officers from the police academy in March.

In a statement Tuesday, the university said it shares students’ concerns and that it is meeting with key leaders across the city and state to expand its efforts, but needs help from others.

“We recognize we have more work ahead of us and we are ready,” the school said.

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Jess Rigefsky, 24, a communications major who commutes to campus from Bucks County, questions whether the university is notifying students about all the crimes in the area.

“I’m concerned walking from campus to the train station at night,” said Rigefsky, 24, who attended the protest.

Sophie Marcotte, 20, a sophomore communications major from Allentown and a member of Keep Us Safe, said she expects more communication and transparency from the university.

“I’m just extremely disappointed in how Temple has handled this,” she said.

Even some students who didn’t attend the protest but watched as the group marched by said they were worried.

“The safety here has been of increasing concern,” said Leah Fitzpatrick, 20, a psychology major from Bethlehem. “It’s harder to justify to parents and friends living here and loving it here and wanting to be here.”

Juliana Bernardo, 19, a media studies major from Reading, said there isn’t enough security in off campus areas where students live.

“If you walk off campus, there are barely any police anywhere,” she said.

Fitzpatrick and Bernardo were excited to move to a new apartment next year. They were shocked when Fitzgerald was killed near it. They’re still going to move there, they said, but that has made them feel less safe.

Fitzpatrick said one thing she agrees with Wingard on is that it can’t just be Temple that solves the problem.

There “needs to be a lot more collaboration with the Philadelphia police and the city,” she said.

Mangan said the university ignored his concerns last semester when he first reached out. He said he had twice asked Wingard to meet when he began hearing about students being robbed at gunpoint and didn’t hear back.

» READ MORE: Police say three home invasions involving students in Temple University neighborhood could be related

There were three home invasions involving Temple students last semester. And also in November, there was a firebombing at a home where Temple students lived.

“It took two weeks until the media covered it to find out it even happened,” he said of the firebombing. “They said they didn’t alert students because they didn’t feel it was an immediate threat. What’s more of an immediate threat than throwing Molotov cocktails through a student’s window.”

He said he had talked to other students and parents who were similarly frustrated and began interviewing the victims of the crimes so he could learn more.

Earlier this month there was a sexual assault outside Morgan Hall that Mangan said students only learned about after Fox 29 reported it.

The president’s office offered to meet with his group only after it announced Tuesday’s public protest, Mangan said. The group, Mangan said, agreed to meet, but not until after the protest.

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Students began the event at Skate Park near Morgan Hall and marched to the Bell Tower, where striking graduate students were holding their own rally. Members of the Temple University Graduate Students Association have been on strike since Jan. 31. Last week, they overwhelmingly voted down a tentative agreement. The two sides negotiated Monday and plan to meet again, the university said.

Mangan said his group and TUGSA are different, but they stand for the same thing: frustration and anger with the university and how it’s being run.