The N.C. A&T University Police Department (UPD) will receive a $3.3 million budget for the 2025 fiscal year. While this is only less than 1% of A&T’s overall FY25 budget of more than $470 million, students have been curious about how UPD receives and invests their funds.
The university receives four main sources of funding for the overall budget: state/general funds: money from the state as well as tuition revenue, restricted trust funds: funds from federal and state grant awards, auxiliary funds: funds generated from enterprise operation profit (think revenue from the campus bookstore), and overhead funds: funds from excess professional indemnity insurance.
UPD’s budget is mainly sourced from state/general funds and a $60 campus security fee that each student pays through their tuition. The campus security fee is a fairly new fee as it was initiated in 2017 by the state of NC in response to a nationwide concern for college campus safety.
Although the security fee is a state mandated fee, A&T administration sees law enforcement as a valuable expense to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff.
“Since the rise of incidents on campuses,like Virginia Tech, we’ve had a higher focus on campus security. The goal of law enforcement is to keep the campus safe,” said Chattara Joyner, A&T’s assistant vice chancellor of budget and planning.
UPD’s FY25 budget is spent on two large ‘umbrella’ expenses: personnel and operations. Approximately $3 million are allocated to personnel expenses and just under $273,000 are allocated to operational expenses.
Personnel expenses employ and retain staff. This money ensures that UPD police officers and security guards get their salaries and wages, health insurance, 401k and more. The university is intentional about fairly compensating law enforcement for fulfilling their duties.
“When you look at our ASR (automated security roster) and you compare that to other universities of our size-when you look at the crime rate in Greensboro and around A&T vs. the crime rate on A&T’s campus, a lot of that is in part due to the men and women-whether in police or security- that go to meet that mission every single day,” said Deputy Chief of Police Bobby Cuthbertson.
While the majority of UPD’s budget is used on personnel expenses, the remainder of the budget is spent on operational expenses. This includes any purchase the department makes for the services they provide. Police vehicles, emergency towers around campus and patrol drones are all operational expenses.
When UPD sends in their budget request every other year, they try to prioritize which operational expenses are most important by looking at the types of situations they’ve had to repeatedly deal with over the last couple of years. So for instance, if numerous non-students are coming on campus and causing issues, UPD will propose a budget that can fund more patrol operational services.
Chief Cuthbertson thinks that students’ voices and opinions are very important during this proposal period and encourages students to contact UPD and tell them what resources they think need to be allotted for in their budget.
“We are expanding our reach into the community and our community has reached us back,” said Chief Cuthbertson.
If you would like to potentially influence UPD’s next budget, contact UPD via the community engagement center located in the Student Center, their phone number: 336-334-7128 or their email: [email protected] and let them know what initiatives you think they need to establish.
