It’s hard for people like me not to be skeptical of the new Student Support Division created by the MSU police.

I still have a lot of hostility toward cops, mostly left from when I first came here in 1998. That was when East Lansing and MSU chose to declare war on alcohol. I remember an entirely different police presence in the city that gave me a bad taste in my mouth I’ll probably keep for the rest of my life.

There were so many stories of people walking home from parties, getting harassed by police on the sidewalk if they looked under age. It became the consensus that it was legally safer to drive home drunk than walk.

At that time, the Department of Police and Public Safety was issuing the second greatest number of alcohol citations of any campus in the country (it would soon move to No. 1).

And the East Lansing police, from what I observed, had adopted the policy of breathalyzing everyone in an entire house when they came to break up parties and citing half the house with $200 minors-in-possession of alcohol violations. I guess they thought they could stop college students from drinking by handing out fines.

We didn’t feel protected by police. But we certainly felt enforced.

But the police have changed, and you rarely hear about that kind of stuff happening anymore.

Now when they break up a party, they just send everyone home or issue a noise violation. They’ve become much less adversarial, and I think the students have responded.

Still, if you look over your shoulder in fear of the police over and over again for two years, you’re bound to harbor a little bit of resentment toward whatever stirs your adrenaline.

Another breakdown in student-police relations came early in 2000, when the MSU police, with the approval of MSU President M. Peter McPherson, infiltrated the student group now known as Students for Economic Justice with an undercover officer.

When the uproar came after the action was uncovered, the police were incredibly evasive. They gave us version upon version of their motives until our heads spun. Their chronology made no sense.

When The State News filed a Freedom of Information Act request, they refused to surrender any documentation of the operation that lasted several months, claiming, absurdly that they had none.

When you want to make a problem disappear in politics, you appoint a committee to study the problem. So the administration chose, to its credit, three apparently unbiased community members and the chairperson of ASMSU’s Student Assembly, Quinn Wright, to study this problem and come to a conclusion.

The conclusion of the independent committee was the actions of the MSU police were inappropriate and wrong. “Uh, oh,” the administration said, and appointed yet another committee to study this “new” problem - that is, the problem of being in the wrong.

That brings us to the Task Force on Student-Police Relations, which led to the creation of a new division of the MSU police force called the Student Support Division.

The Student Support Division is directed by MSU police Capt. Ken Hall. Hall is a 21-year veteran with a brand new title.

My natural hostility and skepticism toward the solution to the police infiltration is tempered by a conversation I had with Hall last Friday.

As I looked around his office at the pictures of his family and listened to the enthusiasm he has for his new job, I realized how much he had in common with Students for Economic Justice, which his associates had infiltrated.

Like most cops, he had joined the force because he really wanted to make a positive difference in his community, and being a cop was the way he thought he was most effective.

He reminded me that it’s important not to let my bad experiences with individual police officers color my judgment of an entire community, any more than police officers should let bad experiences with students affect how they feel about all of us.

It’s sad that this had to happen, because I think Students for Economic Justice and people like Hall are driving at the same goal: Justice for the people.

Instead of concentrating on intimidating liberal student groups and 20 year olds with beer, the police’s time could be better spent on things that are more immediately damaging to public safety.

I think if students felt police were working with them to help keep the community safe - rather than against them to keep the students in check - it would do a great deal for student-police relations.

Andrew Banyai is a political science and pre-law senior. Reach him at banyaian@msu.edu.