Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to an editorial that appeared in The Parthenon on Sept. 3, 2019, regarding the university’s new project with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The editorial’s writer tried to tie the initiative’s activities to “anti-immigration fear mongering” and questioned why “a major public educational institution insist[s] on cowardly allocating resources toward helping bigoted agencies lock up even more struggling poor people across the country.”

First, it is important to understand that federal agencies routinely contract with top-tier universities across the nation, just like this partnership with Marshall.  Secondly, the Department of Homeland Security has 22 departments under its authority, with responsibilities that include everything from emergency response to the Secret Service to cybersecurity and infrastructure.

In this case, they are looking to us to help them prevent illegal drugs from coming into the U.S. Let’s face it, our country’s drug problems may have been started with the legal distribution of opioids, but in reality, our challenges today have graduated to the illegal drug markets—internationally and here at home.     

Very specifically for this project, Marshall’s faculty and student experts in the Digital Forensics and Information Assurance program will be developing and implementing a tool to help identify, disrupt and dismantle cybercrime networks related to the illegal trafficking of narcotics. The project also includes training, research and a co-op program for our students who may be interested in enhancing their cyber and digital forensics skills. 

This is not about arresting people off the streets or “striking fear in the hearts of minorities in our communities,” as the editorial misleadingly stated. This is about stopping sophisticated cybercriminals who are using the internet to bring poison into our country and our communities.  To answer a question posed in the editorial, “Whose side are we on, anyway?”  We are on the side of the parents, siblings, and friends who have lost loved ones to the opioid crisis in our region.  We are on the side of the people who may still be saved from this epidemic.  

There is nothing in this project—or in any of our cyber or digital forensic programs—that works with, talks to or engages with the enforcement of immigration law.  To lead readers to believe otherwise is simply untrue.

Marshall University has a rich history of doing the right thing when the right thing is needed. It is disheartening for someone to use power of the pen to misrepresent something that could make such a positive impact.

Sincerely,

Charles C. Somerville, PhD, FLS

Dean, College of Science

Marshall University

[email protected]