Colleges Apply Police Tactics on Protesters

Major shifts in schools' approach to student discipline cases

Author

Matt Davis
March 30, 2025

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Thanks. And my regular readers can skip the standard disclaimer and get right to the news below the image. 👇🏻 Standard disclaimer for those who are new: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”

Today’s front page features a shot of American soldiers in Ukraine. I was up late watching a three-hour movie with Adrian Brody in it so I literally couldn’t be bothered to go to the store for the paper this morning but this is a screenshot of the pdf. Don’t judge me.

Today’s front page story by Isabelle Taft is about campus police using new tactics against protesters. Once, I painted the second floor kitchen at York House red on the University of Sussex campus in the middle of the night. It was worth it because it impressed my eventually-to-be-ex-wife, who it turned out was interested in acts of “poetic terrorism.” (This was pre-2001 and you could say those words on a college campus if you wanted to impress your eventually-to-be-ex-wife, without, you know…consequences). (My ex-wife once “interviewed” the unabomber via prison mail, for her campus newspaper here in America, and had a thing about the “Monkey Wrench Gang,” but we were in college, and more importantly, we were white). The University was recently fined £585,000 after a professor quit because a philosophy professor resigned saying that she had faced a campaign of harassment from students and activists over her views on gender identity:

Dr. Stock quit in 2021 after she was accused of being transphobic by students and activists for arguing that transgender women were not women. She said she faced a campaign of harassment, bullying and character assassination before quitting.

Still, back to me and my story about painting the kitchen red at a university famous for a certain kind of free speech (because I always say the right thing about trans issues as well as Palestine).

Sadly the campus security — I can’t in good conscience call them “police” —caught my friend Dave and I by reviewing the security camera footage and finding the guys who walked into the dorms with rollers and a big can of red paint. Would you believe there were no consequences? I entirely would. Believe me. In particular they were very impressed with our taping job. The lines around the light switches were *chef’s kiss* perfect. I did not rat my ex-wife out either. (Bonus points).

Times have changed, in particular if you’re a pro-Palestinian protester on an American college campus. Today’s story opens by reporting on how the University of Pennsylvania caught some protesters who splattered red paint on the statue of Ben Franklin, the school’s founder. Wait…

“I was only there to WATCH A SQUASH MATCH, officer.” From October 2022.

A pro-Palestinian (ruh-roh) group had claimed responsibility for the splattering on social media. Campus police caught the culprit by examining security footage, identifying a student’s cellphone number using data from campus WiFi near the statue at the time it was vandalized, and obtaining a search warrant for T-Mobile’s call records, and later a warrant to seize the phone itself.

On Oct. 18 at 6 a.m., armed campus and city police appeared at the off-campus home of a student believed to be the phone’s owner. A neighbor said they shined lights into her bedroom window, holding guns. Then they entered the student’s apartment and seized his phone, according to a police filing.

Months later, “the student has not been charged with any crime,” the story says.

My first thought on reading this is that the cops were heavy-handed and overzealous but that to be honest, if the protester had been a black guy in Minneapolis he would have been dead in seconds. You mess with the founder of U Penn and a certain group of powerful people are bound to be pissed. They also showed us a picture of the statue and it’s more than “splattered.”

I do think “vandalized” or “daubed” are more appropriate words. Plus the job is terribly untidy.

So, what’s the story?

The Penn investigation, which remains open, is one of several across the country in which universities have turned to more sophisticated technology and shows of police force to investigate student vandalism and other property crimes related to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. (The student who had his phone seized did not respond to an interview request.)

As discussed recently, I do not approve of America’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also think it’s creepy that Donald Trump’s administration is pushing the needle on how hard to go after protesters based on their ideology, particularly on this issue.

His administration has warned 60 universities that they could face penalties from investigations into antisemitism, and has also begun seeking to deport protesters. At least nine current or former students and one professor who were legally in the United States with visas or green cards have already been targeted, with at least one student being detained on the street by officials in plainclothes.

And it pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University, telling the school that it would not discuss restoring the money unless, among other things, campus security agents were given “full law enforcement authority” to arrest students. In response, the university said it had hired 36 “special officers” with that authority.

And those issues give me significant concerns. In that context it is not a surprise that the approach of campus police is being ratcheted up.

Civil rights lawyers and legal experts said the moves were a fundamental shift in the way universities respond to student disciplinary cases. While arrests and searches are already often within the authority of many campus police agencies, recent tactics go beyond what has been the standard for campus security officers, said Farhang Heydari, an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University.

Historically, Mr. Heydari said, campus police have tended to operate with discretion on matters that could affect students’ futures, in some cases not strictly enforcing the law. Hoorah!

But not so much, now.

“It really does just seem to be an expansion in law enforcement power that maybe didn’t exist 20, 25 years ago,” said Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates civil liberties protections online.

Here’s another expert.

“I’ve been doing legal work related to the right to protest for over 35 years, and I haven’t seen this kind of thing on college campuses,” said Rachel Lederman, senior counsel with the Center for Protest Law & Litigation.

It’s too bad the University of Pennsylvania wasn’t as zealous in preventing campus hazing deaths over the years. I’m also sad that America’s university students aren’t able to protest in this country, any more, without the threat of more serious consequences than they faced before. That, to me, is the essence of the college experience. You’re able to push the boundaries and do things that would otherwise get you into trouble. Unless, it seems, you get involved in vandalism and happen to carry your cellphone with you. At that point, America is definitely not messing around. Although as the story did report, the Penn student is yet to be formally charged. So: Maybe times haven’t changed all so much after all?

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to. I appreciate you.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.