Blue State University Slammed for Allowing Jew Exclusion Zones and Chaos on Campus

EugeneEdge / shutterstock.com
EugeneEdge / shutterstock.com

UCLA has found itself in hot water after months of chaotic and violent anti-Israel protests, leaving a wake of injuries, property damage, and lawsuits. An independent report released Thursday by 21st Century Policing Solutions didn’t hold back, calling for “fundamental, structural changes” to how the university handles protests. Spoiler alert: they currently don’t handle them well at all.

The report was brutal: UCLA’s response to the protests was a total train wreck. There were no clear policies, so the admin was left scrambling and making snap decisions—most of them bad. Campus police and university officials weren’t even sure if they could step in unless things got violent, which they did.

The worst part was when protesters set up a so-called “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus, where students allegedly had to wear wristbands and denounce Israel to get in. Yeah, that went about as well as you’d expect, sparking outrage and lawsuits. By May, things got so out of hand that over 100 protesters were arrested when it all turned into a full-on mess.

The report slammed UCLA for failing to learn from past mistakes, specifically a 2012 set of recommendations meant to guide responses to campus disruptions. Instead, the university repeated those mistakes, proving that procrastination and chaos are apparently staples of their crisis management style.

To clean up the mess, the report recommends that UCLA get its act together—immediately. The university needs to get its act together with a solid plan for dealing with protests, proper training for admins and campus cops, and a system to review what went wrong (or right) after each incident. Oh, and maybe hire a few people whose whole job is to keep things from going off the rails. You know, the basics.

As of now, UCLA hasn’t commented on the report. But given the lawsuits and public scrutiny, they might want to start making some changes—fast. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before another protest turns into a headline-worthy disaster.