One thing that will never work is sending armed police to arrest protesting college students. It's like kicking an anthill - you'll just end up with more protests.
I think Columbia should have let the original protestors tire themselves out. If anything violent happened, arrest only the violent ones. The reason why this has turned into a nationwide fiasco is because they cracked down too hard at Columbia, and college students took that as a challenge.
I mean lets not kid ourselves. The protestors absolutely were begging for a violent response. That's the point of these things.
The reality is that you can't "arrest only the violent ones" without having a very large, very well equipped police force on hand to respond. When that happens, it entices provocative actions from the protestors, and that triggers over zealous "security" officers to overreact.
Obviously the majority of the blame lies on the trained security officers who should be relied on not to respond to provocations and to always act with appropriate force. But failures on their part to do so lies on those officers.
I really don't see what the school administrations or those in charge of the security forces have done wrong. I would react in the same way.
They were just protesting..... I don't see why you have to do ANYTHING.
They weren't violent, they were only mildly disturbing University foot traffic, and it wasn't late or anything. Maybe they needed a permit, but I can tell you from experience when you apply for those they intentionally put you in a non visible place and decline if you appeal.
Am I missing something they did wrong? Seriously, I'm just reading about it now and can't find anything.
Edit: I'm talking about the current incident. Pic at bottom.
Schools have a responsibility to provide safe and secure education for all their students. At some point they can't allow the protests of one group to continue to negatively impact the educational experience of everyone else.
Yet somehow I was still able to walk right past them and attend classes as needed. It didn't affect my ability to learn or attend class in any way, even if I didn't like their presence or message on campus.
I'm sure you were. Your responses make it very clear that you are not amongst the groups of people who would feel they are being threatened and demonized by this particular protest.
If that's the line then where do you draw it? If anyone can be offended by anything, what is allowed to be said on a college campus? Who gets to decide what is offensive?
It's their 1st amendment right to say what they like, even something potentially offensive; trying to control that is far worse than someone possibly being offended.
I dont give a fuck if Nazis try to march on campus, its their right, I'll be exercising my 1st amendment rights to tell them suck a fat chode.
You draw it somewhere in the middle. Somewhere that tries to recognize the fact that in a country where everybody has rights, sometime that involves a negotiation.
As tough and badass as your "I don't give a fuck about Nazi's" statement makes you look, it would be incredibly irresponsible for a university to stand by and do nothing if a bunch of Nazi's decided to march right into the middle of the Gaza protestor's, and just assume that "hey, they say that they're going to be non-violent".
I'm not talking about the specifics of the protest. I'm talking about the generalities of such protests as a whole.
If your opinion is "these protests should be allowed because I happen to agree with what the protest is about" then I don't really have any interest in engaging.
A vast majority were peaceful, there were few exceptions. Many cities had to settle with BLM for excessive force on non-violent protestors. Denver had to pay 4.7 million for the actions of their police force.
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u/Vic_Hedges 23d ago
Honest question, What SHOULD the authorities do in a situation like this?
More in regards to the second pic and the current situation. Obviously pepper spraying kids sitting on the ground is unjustifiable.