Reality Fair poll: Students favor school resource officers

Putnam County eighth-graders attending the Reality Experience program Monday at the Community Building on the Putnam County Fairgrounds overwhelmingly favor a school resource officer in their building, a survey shows.

Voting results revealed that 85.6 percent of the students who participated in the poll favor having a school resource officer.

The Greencastle League of Women Voters annually asks a timely question during the Reality Experience event. The question this year was: “A school resource officer is a sworn law enforcement officer whose responsibility is safety and crime prevention in schools. Do you think each school should be required to have a school resource officer?”

The overall results found 314 students in favor and 53 opposed.

The results by school corporation are:

Greencastle -- Yes - 94, No - 21 (82.6 percent).

Cloverdale -- Yes - 69, No - 5 (93.2 percent).

North Putnam -- Yes - 85, No - 11 (88.5 percent).

South Putnam -- Yes - 66, No - 16 (80.4 percent).

“The kids were varied and interesting,” League of Women Voters representative Karen Martoglio said. “It’s rewarding to engage with these young folks on a subject of voting and civic responsibility. I think many of them hadn’t thought about it before.”

Interestingly enough, the two student groups displaying the highest percentage of voters in favor of the idea -- Cloverdale and North Putnam -- either have a school resource officer in place or have made arrangements for an officer for their buildings.