What. the. hell?

And to think that you guys pay to be there. Imagine loading yourself with massive student debt for a place that stocks up on weapons as if its at war with you.
They are right. I can't wrap my head around it.
- I am glad my biggest worries as a student were if I wasn't failing any classes and not how many weapons the university was buying to control the student body.
  
  Hey Jones! If you fail one more test, I'll have you taken out the back and shot!
- Good point, only students should be allowed to carry guns.

I'm an Indiana University alum and my dad was a professor there. During the protests there, they had a fucking sniper on the roof. The protests were in a park next to the student union which had been used for protests since the Vietnam War. I was there in middle school in a shanty that was protesting the 1990s Gulf War. Now the new semester has started and there's a chain link fence around the whole thing.
The president just got a raise.
Makes me fucking sick.
Here's the sniper:
I used to climb up to that roof where that sniper is with friends when I was in high school to smoke weed, so that was a trip to see.
- I agree it's insane what they do, but the sniper is needed with the direction we've gone. The sniper is there in case someone with a gun comes to kill protesters, not to kill protesters or they would have done it by now. They really are there for everyone's safety. Now the guys on the ground who attack people or the guys firing pepper rounds/spray at protesters, they're the ones we should be complaining about. The ones who are actually applying violence to protesters. The sniper may appear worse if you aren't paying attention, but they've yet to actually shoot anyone, while protesters have been assaulted.
  
  Nonsense. The sniper is part of the same police force as the one attacking protesters.
  Which side did the cops take when protesters in New York were attacked?

European here. "Pepper munitions" aren't military weaponry as they're banned for use in war by the Chemical Weapons Convention. This all reads like riot control stuff. The only weird thing is that american universities have their own police departments.
- Does that actually count as a police department or is that more like a private security company and they have to call the real police if anything happens?
- Neither are the bean back rounds and launchers
  But yeah, this was a shock for me a few years after I graduated. My school made a big deal of “Campus Security” becoming spcertified as a police force “University Police”, but the only reason they ever gave was so they could carry guns.
  I’m not denying there may be a gun threat occasionally, but this was in a small university town, not near any cities. This was as safe a place as you could expect, and I’m sure almost all their calls were kids binging on new intoxicants, and kids fumbling through dating and relationships
- (not so) Fun Fact:
  They're banned in war because in War you're unable to run away. You have to decide to stay there in your trench which amplifies the gas and suffocates you or run and get shot.
  That's why they're banned in war and why they're perfectly fine for police
- Agreed. The "Pepper munitions" might be paint-ball style rounds shot from paint-ball style guns. I'm not sure in this case, but other police departments have had them. The grenade launchers are for tear gas grenades. Perhaps also flash-bang or stun grenades.

How is a private entity allowed to buy military grade weaponry to use against their students?
Oh right... 'Merica. You guys have a problem with weapons, a problem no civilized country has. But then again, we're not talking about a civilized country but a capitalism ruled country.
- There are plenty of capitalist countries where this sort of shit doesn't happen.
  
  Because none of them are ruled by capitalism. Capitalism is their economic system, not their government system.
- Don't say, "against their students", say, "against their customers". Which makes it sound even more ridiculous.
- Capitalism isn't the problem.
  Edit: I would argue wealth inequality is the problem. You can have (a form of) capitalism and still fix wealth inequality.
  
  Capitalism is a tool, used by 2000 people to rule the rest. Hierarchy is the problem. The idea that one person is better than the other.
  This idea needs to die already.
  But yes, money is a good tool to brainwash people into misunderstanding the worth of their work and their property. This „inflation“ treadmill is insane and makes you run faster in the hamster wheel while the rich dont work at all!
  And may the odds be ever in your favor.
  
  Capitalism may not be the problem, but "country being ruled by capitalism" definitely is.
  
  It's THE problem
  
  Capitalism will seek profits over all else. If that requires implementing corporatism as a form of government it will endeavour to do so. That is the point of the whole god damn thing.
  Capitalism is an extremely potent and powerful tool to create profits. Whatever else it does is incidental. If the food system can get away with creating a profit by making you eat sawdust then it will. All costs are externalised as much as possible and all profit is privatised as much as possible. This is not a bug but a feature.

"to escalate its warfare on its students"
Yep, my mind doesn't understand this phrase at all.

The french gendarmerie recently received a new vehicle, it's a tank equipped with a machine gun and 40mm grenade launcher. They're deployed in our colony, Caledonia, to enforce an apartheid. They were also used against ecology protesters recently. Last year, a racist cop murdering a kip sparked revolts, anti-terorism units were deployed and shot kids with 12 gauge shotguns. It's not just america, the rich and powerful are at war with the people everywhere.
- It’s not just america, the rich and powerful are at war with the people everywhere.
  The timing is so weird to me. Like they've been amassing riches and power for decades...why did they decide to escalate the conflict now? Do they really believe that a revolution is coming or something? They are continually winning a bloodless propaganda battle to keep accumulating wealth and let everyone else starve, yet they keep escalating things. It's bizarre to behold.
  
  The inequality is worse than it has been in over a century, people are living closer to the edge than ever, employers are taking the piss at this point, and climate change is beginning to sting. All this is to say that it's not just the workers feeling the pinch - it's the petite bourgeoisie too. That scares capital enough to arm themselves more, but not enough to start making concessions.
- Nouvelle-Calédonie?
  
  Yeah iirc Caledonia is somewhere in the British Isles.
- C'est absolument dégueulasse....

"American universities turn into concentration camps" was not on my bingo card for 2024.
- weren't all schools like that from the beginning?

- If you replace capitalism in that sentence with another ism you still have the same results.
  
  Anarchism.
  
  Show me one example of that happening in a real Marxist state.

Insanity

Not American so not up to speed on what’s going on…
Are these students that are protesting doing it with tanks, machine guns, grenades, planes? Are they being at all non-peaceful? Has anyone been killed?
Aren’t they protesting about the arms supplied to Israel and being used against Gazans?
- You don't understand, they have signs. Signs. And they shout. Better buy some bear spray.
  
  Oh my fucking god, are they impeding someone’s income? The monsters!

RIP to all of the Freshmen.
- May the odds be ever in their favor
  
  Its not so bad, they'll will get out in 4 years with Good Behavior.

All paid by every increasing tuition

PR rules the world. Can’t allow free speech and protest if it might draw attention.
Better to show overwhelming military force on domestic college students at the first sign of protest. Keep it from spreading.

UC Merced annual training required only 7 rounds, while UC San Francisco used 7000 and UC Santa Barbara used 9000 🤔
Shoutout to UC Davis for having the only police department on the list who "did not use any military equipment during this timeframe".
For some reason the linked PDF varies from the screenshot in several ways, though most of the numbers are the same. (UC Riverside's number of rounds of .556-range ammunition used in training is 3000 in the screenshot but 6000 in the PDF now.)
I was curious how much this launcher costs:
... over here I see this glorified paintball gun is normally $2400 but currently on sale for just $1850.
- Acceptance rate:
  UC San Fran: 13%
  UC Santa Barbara: 28%
  UC Merced: 88%
  They are completely different schools. So it would be hard to get a perspective by just the numbers of municians purchased. What they teach, how prestigious they are, how many students attend, the size of the campus I'm sure all have impact. San Fran I believe is mostly a graduate school.
  It's crazy that they buy any arms, but as your own information would indicate, training/certifications to maintain their police officers is the majority use. UC Davis is who has the famous picture of a police officer spraying students sitting on the ground with pepper spray a few years ago. Makes me curious if they outsourced their police officers after that event to try to move the blame off of them in future incidents.

Fucking excuse me?

LRAD is some fucked up shit, btw. (Part of the large family of sonic weapons)
An LRAD can thus emit a targeted "beam" of sound at very high volume, up to 160 dB at one meter from the device. This is louder than standing behind a jet engine taking off, or a nearby gunshot.[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device
- nice thing about LRAD is you can build your own and do a ultimate showdown with the cops

All protests should be armed protests.

9 what????
- What do you think you fire the 40mm munitions out of?
  
  Their ass? No wait, that's where their arguments for peaceful protesters being scary are being fired from!

Guess campus protests require AR-15s now. If the cops don't like it they're free to cut the shit.
- Also shotguns with birdshot shells, they're decent against the drones (which they're using).

Do we think part of why this is happening is because Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are in bed with academia
- When the university buys an f35 we can talk about it, this is small arms.

By the way for those that think they're gonna use actual grenades on children, they're just foam "fordy mike mikes" (40mm) that are designed to fit in a grenade launcher. Pepper balls are similar to pepper spray (but iirc it's a bit stronger)
doesn't make it better lol
- If you've ever been hit by either (I've been hit by a few pepper balls) - it fucking sucks. It is painful, it can, absolutely, be lethal if it hits a neck/face/chest.

excuse me wtf
- This is all riot control gear. US universities usually have their own police departments, so by extension they usually have their own riot control gear as well.
  You wouldn't use any of this stuff in war. It isn't designed to kill people (although it can and will, especially if used improperly).
  
  (although it can and will, especially if used improperly).
  I guess that why, with the exception of the first 2 entries, every other instance is for training.

What do they need grenade launchers for???
With a weird mind you could excuse single target weapons, but grenades? Do you want want to free some seats early?
- Grenade launcher make excellent multi-purpose payload delivery systems. You can put bean bags in them for direct firing, and pepper "spray" or tear-gas canisters for indirect engagements.
- For the 40mm impact munitions in the list. Riot control gear.
  "Grenade launcher" here isn't very specific. Could be like an M203 or something, which is a tube launcher that lobs 40mm rounds up to about 100m. You can absolutely get 40mm frag grenades and blow shit up, that's what most people think of when they think of a "grenade launcher," but that's not what it's on the list here. You can lob gas canisters, smoke, illumination flares, etc etc etc, just depends on what you're trying to do.
- Less-lethal grenades, probably.
- It kind of fits SAS tactics, who often complete missions with no lethal shots. They flood areas with CS gas (using grenade launchers) then invade with gas masks.

Jesus, a fucking LRAD? Those things are NASTY

This was the second act of Shion Sono’s movie “Tag,” yeah?

This is the process of excessive liberality turning into excessive authority, and relates to what Republicans react to (with equally excessive zeal) by calling democrats fascist.
Democrats are not (necessarily) fascists. Republicans are not (necessarily) nazis. But the problematic tendencies of the extremes of the parties aren't resolved by going more extremely partisan and authoritarian.
- Some enlightened centrism in this comment. What are your first principles? As the Overton window continues to slide rightward, are you willing to commit to the current equilibrium? Or will you simply adjust each year?
  Maybe we shouldn’t be lobbing grenades at college protestors.
  
  I don't think you actually have any interest in my first principles, and because the question isn't genuine, I don't care to discuss them with you.
  I absolutely wouldn't commit to the current "equilibrium", as it's dysfunctional all around. I don't care about the overton window shift, because there's an underlying objective reality that tends to keep it swinging back and forth. When we tip outside of that typical swing, it's generally exploitation by one party and myopia by the other, or some similar dynamic. On top of that, i just don't base my decisions on whether something is right or left.
  I an not suggesting that we should be lobbing grenades at college protestors. I'm pointing out that this is occurring in a comparatively 'liberal' state (California) and in a comparatively 'liberal' context (academia), and that liberal ideals leave liberals open to authoritarian abuse, yet they are shocked when it happens.
  This, of course, isn't unique to liberals. If things get too authoritarian, you open yourself up to manipulation - case in point, the current state of the Republican party.

Tbf though this is non-lethal stuff. And I don't know that much about American police, but maybe it's not such a bad idea universities don't let them handle crowd control? I hear they don't have the best track record.
(I get that in an ideal world universities shouldn't arm themselves against their students, but come on, Jeff from the economics department is a real douchebag, and ever since he has been hanging around with those extremists he is becoming more and more unhinged)
- Creating a parallel force because the local police sucks is like the definition of curing the symptoms instead of the disease; well, attempting to, anyway.
  Crowd control itself is the same thing, if you've got enough unhappy people to generate a mob that needs to be suppressed, I think you may have a social problem on your hands.
  
  The KKK are indeed a fundamentally social problem, but may need to be curtailed with enforcement at times.
- No such thing as "non lethal" and never was. There is "less lethal" which still kills.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-less-lethal-weapons-actually-do/

- In Europe I think most Universities just rely on the city's police? Why would an educational facility need their own (assuming it's close enough to a town or village).
  
  So, apart from the overreaction to protests, larger universities will have their own police departments because they have a large physical footprint and tens of thousands of staff and students whose needs and interests and priorities may not perfectly align with the broader community's. Students as "gowns" are transitory, young, rowdy, and annoying but often have issues the local "towns" will view as petty and low priority.
  A University PD will ultimately report to the University's leadership, and the University will set their budget and broad mission. Frankly, as a student 25 years ago, at least back then I would generally much preferred to have interactions with the University PD than the local city PD.
- What if there were an outside force that was attacking students/university
  That happened at UC Los Angeles a few months ago; the university police chief and 19 of his officers stood by and watched the attacks for over 3 hours before intervening: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/11/ucla-protests-police-inaction-fights/
- So your solution to right wing violence is to put more weapons in the hands of typically very right wing people notorious for being violent with impunity? 🤦

What people in this thread are missing or ignoring:
The University of California is known for being a place for political protests
These protests do not always stay peaceful
These protests are not always primarily student-run or consisting of students
All combinations have happened. Peaceful student-run protests with overreactive police. Violent non-student protests with police doing their job to control things. And everything in between.
- Do you really think the UC is the only university in the world having protests? Because you know... I've seen protests in so many other countries but none of them had a university buying a fucking grenade launcher to "pacify" them.
  
  The tear gas is definitely excessive, but the right amount of “weapons” to buy is not 0.