Cultural awareness and diversity are key to improving relations between students and police officers. MSU’s Department of Police and Public Safety is doing a good job of using that fact to better its officers.

Latino students met with MSU police employees Tuesday to help improve communication between the two groups. The department plans on bringing in speakers from the Alliance of Lesbian-Bi-Gay-Transgendered and Straight Ally Students and the Hillel Jewish Student Center.

These steps only can help things out between the department and students. When steps are taken to reach out to diverse groups of students, they tend to become a little more confident in the police department. Students might start to understand that police officers are concerned with learning more about them and what some of their concerns are. That can only work to improve student-police relations.

Police officers and students haven’t always been willing to work together to improve their relationship, so to see them working together calls for a round of applause for all parties involved.

Hopefully these actions will open the doors even wider. By doing this the police officers are getting the chance to learn more about various cultures, and the students get the opportunity to be around officers outside of seeing them on duty.

With efforts like these the police department can continue to increase its sensitivity toward other cultures. After all, one can never be too sensitive when it comes to creating a good relationship between police and students.

Students and MSU police are headed in the right direction. It’s good they recognize that tensions exist and are doing things to try to eliminate these tensions.

Only then can everyone feel that MSU has a culturally-sensitive police department and student population.