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With the militarization of American universities proceeding apace…

… (see background here), we are going to need armories and we are going to need shooting ranges, by way of preparing campus police for crowd control.

Crowd control, in the current context of big-time university sports (start at 1:56), increasingly means keeping people inside the stadium or arena until the game is over.

One way to do this would be to use your tanks and guns to intimidate people into staying. Occasionally, you might have to fire (non-lethal) materials.

Ideally, these armories/shooting ranges would themselves be arenas and stadiums, so that university security personnel could get a realistic sense of crowd, uh, containment.

One central location UD proposes for a national armory of this sort would be Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center. Like many excitedly built university stadiums (CSU was excited because one of its teams did well one year, and the trustees decided that before you knew it CSU would be king of the world, so they needed a new stadium), this one is an empty, money hemorrhaging mess.

After getting the latest year-end financial report, which again showed a $1 million loss, [CSU] trustees today said the university has to examine all options, even those as improbable as demolishing it.

But whoa! How about renting it out to universities all over the country (world?) for practice? With Berkeley having recently rejected an eight-ton armored truck as “not the best choice for a university setting,” we can anticipate industry offering a line of university-appropriate heavy weaponry – tanks in soft shades, with quotations from Virginia Woolf on them… Some of these could be gathered at Wolstein for use by any university interested in learning how to keep students in their seats.

CSU’s big competition is Florida Atlantic University. FAU is not only located in Florida rather than Ohio, but has a much bigger empty stadium (30,000 vs. 13,000 seats). CSU will have to act fast to secure market share.

Margaret Soltan, October 1, 2013 1:20PM
Posted in: guns, sport

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4 Responses to “With the militarization of American universities proceeding apace…”

  1. david foster Says:
    October 1st, 2013 at 5:35PM

    No, no, no….you’re thinking way too small.

    You don’t use the tanks or APCs or whatever these things are to keep the students in their seats…you make these vehicles the centerpieces of the event. Two armored vehicles, fighting to the (literal) death for the honor of their respective universities, on a field (which will be improved by the addition of tank traps and other obstacles)…you think people wouldn’t *voluntarily* stay in their seats for that? And pay serious money for the tickets? Christians vs Lions was lame by comparison.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    October 1st, 2013 at 6:45PM

    david: I love it.

  3. charlie Says:
    October 2nd, 2013 at 1:16AM

    Something is going on. Why the hell are universities even contemplating the efficacy of these massive weapons? Does this mean that we’ll have armed university police as well? What will become of tuition when insurance premiums reflect the cost of all this weaponry? Are administrators fearing that someone is going to come after them? Honestly, this makes no sense at all. But the trend is for more on campus firepower, and there is no rational reason for it that I can see…

  4. University Diaries » ‘[C]ompetition [from tv, social media, etc.] will only fuel schools and the NCAA to get more creative in how they improve the viewing experience in the stadium in an effort to keep people coming back.’ Says:
    October 4th, 2013 at 9:49AM

    […] UD has suggested armed intervention. […]

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