It isn’t just Democrat-run cities that have learned how ridiculous their embrace of “defund the police” has been. Now, students at the University of Chicago are learning that reality isn’t as rosy as the utopia in their heads.
Students there protested, demanding more campus police and better campus security after the shooting death of recent graduate Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng. Zheng was killed near campus on a Tuesday afternoon, and he is the third University of Chicago student killed this year.
Students at the university had a far different tone just one year ago. Starting on Aug 29., students occupied a block outside of Provost Ka Yee Lee’s home for one week to try and pressure the university to disband the University of Chicago’s Police Department. In June, students held a 19-hour sit-in at the department’s headquarters.
The university newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, published an editorial demanding the university “disband its private police force.” Now, the paper reports that a public letter from over 300 faculty members “called on the University administration to make anti-violence a top priority, urging a larger border of University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) jurisdiction and increased surveillance and security guards in Hyde Park.”
It likely isn’t the same students going from “abolish the police” to demanding more protection, but it is an instructive example nonetheless. A loud minority of privileged students, caught up in the activist fantasy of a society without police, demanded no police presence on the college’s campus.
But reality does not cooperate with this anti-police worldview. Chicago was one of the many cities that saw a surge in homicides in the past year, and the University of Chicago was not immune from that violence. If there is a lesson here for the students who want more security and more police officers, it’s that it isn’t enough to ignore social justice activists when they throw their tantrums and make demands. They must be pushed back on, and you must make it clear to the administration that the loud minority does not speak for you.
The university police department, along with the Chicago Police Department, is already working on a safety plan to help protect students moving forward. But students at the University of Chicago and universities across the country should remember how social justice devotees view safety compared to the reality we all live in. The next time a group of privileged activist students try to keep police officers away from their campus, they should be met with a large, vocal opposition.
