Instant arsehole - just add uniform!

This week, I am mostly outraged by the inappropriate and indiscriminate tactics employed by The University's very own police force. Quite why this Well-Known West Coast University needs its own police force is beyond my comprehension, since this is possibly the most tedious and trouble-free campus that I have seen anywhere in the world. No matter, the fact is that we do, and it's been clear to me in my dealings with them that they have a bit of a chip on their shoulder because, uniforms notwithstanding, they're not proper police. Aaron Spelling would never have written an action series about the exciting and seedy-but-glamorous life of The University's very own thin blue line, daily braving dangers to keep the campus protected from illegal parking and skinny, twenty-year-old socialists. The campus fuzz know this, and it gnaws away at their very tiny and soulless minds, so it's no wonder that they have a warped attitude. Added to which there's nowhere on campus that sells decent donuts.

It seems that this time their malignant nature has taken them too far, and more importantly it's taken them too far in front of fifty or so witnesses with camera phones. A 'full investigation' has been ordered by the acting chancellor, which can be roughly translated as 'a spineless hatchet-job on the student involved, followed by a couple of quiet dismissals and panicked settlement with the student's family'.

Not that I object in principal to rough treatment of undergraduates. There are occasions in campus life when they need a thorough going-over that they won't forget. Occasionally one of them needs to be separated from the herd and made an example of, just to keep the others in check. But that is not the role of the police. It is, and always has been, the strict domain of the Academic Staff. That's what we get payed for. What's next, SWAT Teams proctoring exams? That's my job, and I don't need any fairy body-armour and and a wussy fucking baton to do it.

Heroically protecting us from the scourge of mendacious disabled parking permits

For those who really thrive on this sort of thing, you can watch an undergraduate student having the shit kicked out of him here