I don’t often delve off into national politics because, quite frankly, it’s way above my pay grade. Some would argue that a local zoning board would be above my pay grade, but for now, we’ll leave that argument for later discussion.
But I fear there is a disturbing trend out in the real world, folks, and the early signs are it’s only going to get worse. So, within my limited capabilities, I will attempt to address a development that, having grandchildren in college, I find especially troubling.
Aside from that despicable display at Charlottesville a few weeks back, there have been no civic uprisings of a scale to require extra hair spray for David Muir’s ABC evening newscasts.
While certainly, there have been several inexplicably senseless shootings of individuals by law enforcement officers, there has been nothing as tragic and senseless as the Kent State University shootings 0n May 4, 1970, or at Jackson State University 11 days later.
My wife and I celebrated our 49th anniversary last month and at the time of the slaughter of these students, we were still two months shy of our second anniversary. We were only a couple of years older than they when they were cut down.
And today, sadly, the seeds are being planted for future occurrences far more catastrophic than those of more than 46 years ago.
Last month Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Program 1033, first enacted by Congress in 1996 during the administration of President Bill Clinton but suspended two years ago by President Barack Obama, was being resumed.
Program 1033 (Click HERE) is a program whereby America has been furtively arming police departments across the country with military armaments designed to put down insurrections, riots, or even peaceful protests.
Sessions noted that the program was originally implemented “for use in drug enforcement by federal and state law enforcement.
But here’s the real kicker: The program is now being expanded to colleges and universities which feel the need to possess military hardware. Already, 117 institutions of higher education, including two Louisiana universities, now have sufficient weaponry to tilt the balance in their favor should a horde of angry college students set out to overthrow the government of these 50 sovereign states. (Click HERE).
Apparently, it’s not enough that any governor can call up the National Guard to protect the status quo as was done at Kent and Jackson State. Now the campus police, P.O.S.T. (Police Officer Standards and Training) certified though they may now be but still, for the most part, seriously lacking in proper policing skills other than handing out campus parking tickets, are going to be armed to the teeth.
What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, discounting the obvious potential of horrific meltdowns in tense situations such as occur on a typical game day, the bean counters on university campuses are looking at the bottom line as if it is, in itself, justification for placing a powder keg next to the barbecue grill at a Saturday afternoon tailgate party: “For me, this is a cost savings for taxpayers,” says University of Florida Associate Vice President and Dean of Students.
What??!!
A COST SAVINGS??!!? These are our children and grandchildren you’re placing in harm’s way, you idiot! Are you out of your rabbit-assed mind, you booger-eating moron??!!
Oh, sorry. I forgot. Students are only secondary to big-time sports and the almighty bottom line.
An equally asinine quote by Fort Valley State University associate professor of criminal justice Michael Qualls that, coming as it does from a member of academia, has to make one ask what “WTF?”:
“…as those items become obsolete at the military level and if they become available, why not get ’em?”
By that logic, universities might wish to look into obtaining decommissioned battleships, submarines and even a few dozen “obsolete” nuclear bombs, along with a couple of mothballed B-52 bombers to deliver them.
Yeah, right.
Comic Ron White nailed it when he said you can’t fix stupid.
Just let any otherwise insignificant event occur on a college campus and some trigger-happy, itchy-finger campus commando cop with an M-16 come on the scene and we have another massacre on our hands. Only this time, it’ll be far worse than Kent State and Jackson State combined.
With exceptions that are completely in line with the general population, our colleges and universities have done just fine, thank you, without the ominous presence of G.I. Joe ready to put down any simmering restlessness on the part of college students who might be angry over any number of things—cuts to funding, say, or increased tuition, suppression of freedom of speech (the latest on-campus fad), the every-widening wage disparity, climate change, or another in a string of senseless wars designed only to make military suppliers and speculators wealthy.
I mean, after all, we just can’t have free expression, the free exchange of ideas, on our college campuses. That would be subversive and….well, dangerous. We don’t want these kids thinking for themselves, becoming active in any type of student resistance, or even engaging in dialogue outside the campus community.
Besides the 12 M-16s issued to both NSU and ULM, some schools are getting armored pickup trucks (University of Florida) and “Mine Resistant Vehicles,” or MRAPS as they are affectionately known in such tourist meccas as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Purdue, being an especially dangerous hangout for subversives of all sorts, is getting 25 M-16s but that’s nothing. The University of Maryland is reaping 50 of those, two M-14s, and 16 riot shotguns (12-gauge). They must really be expecting trouble from those rowdy quantum physics majors.
Hinds Community College and the University of Central Florida received grenade launchers and Texas Southern University got a mine-resistant vehicle.
Seriously, they really did.
Next will come the name changes: Hinds Community Military Installation, Fort Central Florida. Texas Southern University (TSU) will become Tactical Systems University. ULM won’t mean University of Louisiana Monroe; it’ll be University of Light Munitions. NSU will be Neutralizing Systems University.
But for the record, neither Kent State nor Jackson State were among the 117 institutions receiving surplus military supplies.
Could it be that they more readily see the lessons to be learned from the insanity of nearly half-a-century ago?
What was it again that President Eisenhower said upon leaving office in 1960 about the military-industrial complex?
Louisiana Voice 
Give me a break. This crap will be used against American Citizens. As a Vietnam combat veteran, I suggest this is ridiculous and excessive . There is no need to equip the local/ campus cops with this armament. Of course, we should question wether it is also allowable to let teens, gang-bangers and mentally incompetents have access to high powered weapons.
This crap will be used against American Citizens.
Exactly what was JeffBo (aka Keebler Elf) had in mind.
Is the modern American answer to every concern MORE GUNS?
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
I used this excerpt from Eisenhower’s farewell speech as a streamer on my screen saver at work. I thought it was interesting that it came from a five-star general who led the Allies in WWII.
The U.S. spent over $611 billion dollars in 2016 for “defense”. This is more than China, Russia, UK, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, France, and Germany spend. COMBINED. We spend so much that we can offer vastly enhanced weaponry to any city, town, village, burg, and college system who wants them. This is absurd.
Despite all this, we are the only supposedly advanced country in the world who won’t, not can’t, offer universal healthcare to it’s citizenry. Just who is being served here with our tax dollars? Answer is the military industrial complex and the politicians who feed them. This is just fundamentally wrong and yet we continue to elect these people. Sadly this is the mad, mad world we live in today.
Question: Are our college campuses so unruly and dangerous to our democracy that weapons of war are necessary to “control” student behavior? I thought that on the LSU-BR campus there is a special space for public opinion and discourse? Is this still practiced on campus?
Why should public opinion and discourse be confined to a “special space?” As a publicly owned university, shouldn’t the First Amendment protect ALL speech on LSU’s campus? Aren’t ALL opinions to be respected and valued? And to answer your question, yes, radical elements infecting college campuses are especially dangerous, criminally even, to the continued existence of our democracy. College campuses are the rancid, putrid petri dishes in which the most insidious radical counter cultures are nurtured and sustained with loving care, before being released to infect unassuming American communities.
I’ve heard similar poison B.S. emanate from places like the Westboro Baptist Church, ALEC, the Tea Party, wing nuts like Timothy McVea, David Duke, et al, so don’t lay that crap just on universities alone. It’s everywhere but that does not justify military assault weapons on college campuses, federal courthouses, churches or anywhere else, no matter how you may try to justify it—unless you’re advocating a third-world dictatorship like Chad or Zimbabwe.
Ruby don’t forget Wingnut Alex Jones in that list also.
Ms. Bergonia, my comment was specifically in reference to “special spaces” for free speech, and not in support of college police departments being outfitted like SWAT teams. I agree that the militarization of college police forces is a dangerous issue. I stand by my opinion that campus radicals, both students and faculty, ARE dangerous for our republic, although my fear is based more on intellectual threats than physical ones.
“College campuses are the rancid, putrid petri dishes in which the most insidious radical counter cultures are nurtured and sustained with loving care, before being released to infect unassuming American communities.”
Without those “putrid petri dishes”, as you call them, we may have lost even more lives in Vietnam. Maybe we need those “putrid petri dishes” now, to get us out of Afghanistan. Sixteen years now. What have we accomplished?