[EDITOR] ADD WALICEK FROM SATURDAY TO RELATEDS

Police on the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill campus have been out in force in recent days to shut down pro-Palestinian protests and punish students and faculty for participation in encampments.

On the last day of the school’s spring semester, police came en masse in the very early morning to shut down the peaceful protest; widely available video shows the police shoving students and dragging one by the hair. The violence continued later that day as police chased, pushed and pepper-sprayed demonstrators who had replaced an American flag with a Palestinian one. Massive numbers of campus cops in riot gear surrounded students on the campus, backed up by police forces called in from NC State, UNC Wilmington and Appalachian State Universities.

The behavior of the campus police was so disproportionate that members of the Chapel Hill and nearby Carrboro town councils overwhelmingly condemned police response, according to reporting from WUNC. And thousands have signed letters calling on the school to stop punishing students for their expressions of free speech.

These recent events at UNC Chapel Hill provide a case study in how campus police – rather than making students safer — regularly create a dangerous environment.

Campus police and “campus safety” are used interchangeably in much of the news reporting, reinforcing a key point in pro-police propaganda: the idea that more police equals more safety. Yet for decades now, the presence of police on U.S. college and university campuses has been increasing, but this trend has done nothing to stem the tide of gun violence or sexual assault that it is purportedly aimed at addressing. To the contrary, as police tactics and police militarization have intensified, the fear and reality of campus violence have only grown.

The success of the campus police propaganda became starkly clear to me last summer, when friends of mine who work on the UNC Chapel Hill campus described faculty, staff and students cowering for hours under desks, locking doors to their classrooms in the absence of clear instruction, and waiting for word that the campus was “safe” following an active shooter opening fire on the campus.

That August 28, 2023, a UNC Chapel Hill graduate student came onto the campus, armed, and murdered a professor in the science building. Sirens blared. Cops swarmed. The campus went into........

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