Things this week seem especially chaotic and out-of-control, but things may not be what they seem. The New York Times ran a swelling story yesterday headlined, “
Campus Protests Over Gaza Intensify Amid Pushback by Universities and Police.” You’ve probably been waiting impatiently for this development; and now, your waiting is over, the summer of protest finally begins!
At least the kids are doing something, you know, productive.
And it’s spreading faster than gonorrhea during Spring Break. “Patient Zero” was
Columbia University, which was taken in the rear, by surprise, and has now been occupied so fully and so intensely that the school recently canceled all in-person classes through year’s end.
Columbia’s massive pro-Palestine protest is well-organized and well-funded. At Columbia, and at most of the subsequent occupations, the protestors arrived on campus outfitted with expensive tents and camping supplies, since they clearly intend to hang for around a long time:
The Columbia Occupation Protest Zone, or COPZ — at least, that’s what I’m calling it
It’s so bad Speaker Mike Johnson — on his reputation-rehabilitation tour— visited Columbia yesterday arguing persuasively the school’s President should be
fired for incompetence if she can’t get her campus under control.
This protest season sort of blends Occupy Wall Street with Portland’s CHAZ/CHOP, and a stationary version of George Floyd’s “covid-immune” parades and protests during 2020’s Summer of Love. Masks appear optional this time and the dress code is
grunge chic. Riots TBA.
Not all states are rolling over like pleasant pussycats this time. Some learned their lessons last election season. Texas quickly cleared University of Austin’s campus, with jackbooted anti-protestors cracking a few skulls full of mush, and de-squatting the tent-bearing occupiers who were dashing toward the school’s commons area. At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the police moved in just before lunchtime yesterday to shove off an expanding encampment of about 100 protesters preparing to squat amidst the formerly-peaceful center of campus, which USC apparently required for other, non-protest purposes.
Whomever is behind this national rampage hasn’t yet tried setting up any tent cities in Florida, and I suspect it won’t go well for them if they are dumb enough to try it.
But in all the predictable locales, stinky protestor tent cities are cropping up like diseased daisies after a nuclear meltdown. At Harvard, woke school administrators pretended to stop it, but quickly raised their flabby, pale, limp arms in useless surrender—what, after all, can they
really do at the end of the long protest day?
Administrators at Harvard University sought to head off a similar scene by shuttering Harvard Yard, a central gathering place on campus. But students flooded the yard’s grassy patches anyway on Wednesday, rapidly erecting tents as part of an “emergency rally” against the suspension a pro-Palestinian campus group.
At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California, slow-witted administrators shuttered the campus through the weekend after protesters occupied — or “chazzed” — two school buildings. The Ukrainians could learn a thing or two from them. At Brown University in Rhode Island,
scores of sweaty student glampers pitched their brand-new tents on the campus’s Main Green.
Prepare yourselves for the dark underbelly of ‘Summer Camp.’
Multiplier! More lawfare against conservatives and their lawyers in Arizona; CHAZ summer camping season opens on U.S. college campuses; NPR boss' shady resume signals trouble; Biden gaffes; more.
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