The very least parents expect when they send their children to any educational institution is security.
This is the safety of both the physical and mental variety.
After this safety is provided, the educational institute must provide a forum for healthy exchange of ideas and debates.
Education isn't merely about imparting of knowledge but also about challenging students intellectually and compelling them to confront opposing perspectives.
This is not a place for dogma but for open-mindedness. A student must taught to challenge the seemingly immutable and form opinions after digesting facts about any subject from multiple perspectives. An educational institution should be a haven for free expression. Students must be allowed to express all kinds of ideas, irrespective of their propriety so that they can deduce the right path.
This is the bare minimum that is expected.
Alas, the standards plummeted to such an extent that elementary requirements sound like a Utopian dream. The mere mention of these standards probably will elicit giggles and eye rolls from even the most reasonable of people.
How bad is the situation?
An internationally renowned professor was sacked because less than a quarter of the number of his students were upset about receiving low grades and demanded it. You read that correctly he lost his job for being a through evaluator of his students' work.
A once-reputed university willingly segregates its students based on race citing the provision of 'safe spaces' as an excuse.
Universities frequently capitulate before student mobs who do not want to hear the opposing perspective to their own.
The University of California, Berkeley is an example of a once fine institution that has fallen. This is where the likes of Steve Wozniak studied, and Nobel Laureates and geniuses such as J. Robert Oppenheimer taught. Currently, the institution is extremely intolerant and even violent to countering perspectives.
If you thought that the lowest has been traversed you are gravely wrong.
The 'safe space' the university provides can protect students from countering perspectives but not physical danger.
This is due to the widespread misgovernance in the state of California.
In March 2023, Berkeley Police Chief Jen Louis reported that the overall number of violent and property crimes in 2022 was at a 10-year high.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin describes crime around U.C. Berkeley as “extremely concerning and troubling.”
Crime rates continue to climb. As of October 2023, robberies, increasingly via gun, are up 22 % compared to the same period last year.
This has impacted students at U.C. Berkeley who are voicing their concerns to the media, saying it is “definitely less safe than other campuses.”
Matters have devolved to such an extent that parents are compelled to high private security to protect their wards.
Parents have set up an organization called SafeBears and have raised over $40,000 to launch this private security program on the university’s campus.
The SafeBears organization has over 1,300 Berkeley “parents and community allies working to improve safety” for students on campus.
Image: Twitter screen shots
CBS News reported that these private security guards will work from 6:30 p.m. at night to 3:00 a.m. and will patrol the main dorm buildings and the surrounding area.
"The fact is if they're not going to act, despite repeated pleas from parents and students to take more substantial action, then we're going to act. We're going to do what needs to be done to keep our family safe." said a concerned parent named Sagar Jethani.
The University authorities have very little concern for the parents or their students in peril.
A spokesperson from U.C. Berkeley raised concerns about SafeBears to Fox News and claimed the campus's own efforts to keep people safe are keeping people safe.
"Hiring private security raises a number of concerns including the training and experience of individuals hired by such firms," the spokesperson warned. "Further, any security effort on the campus must be coordinated with U.C.P.D., independent of the funding source."
When standards deviate for a prolonged period of time the norms get redefined and cease to cause shock or outrage.
Sadly, lawlessness and violence in the state of California don't cause shock or surprise among readers.
It has reached an extent where even an educational institution isn't safe and parents are left with no option but to take matters into their own hands.
This is probably going to be the future of states ruined by Democrats. People have no option to hire private security while the tax they pay is used for the welfare of illegal aliens and funding a war in Ukraine.
The apathy, ineptitude, corruption, and selfishness have caused citizens of the the world's only superpower to have experiences that third world nations suffer.
The state of California is not dissimilar to the state of education institutions across the nation. In both cases, the inmates are running the asylum while the authorities are incompetent, uncaring, craven, and focused on appearing virtuous rather than performing the duties for which they receive their salaries.
What was once unthinkable is now the sad truth.
Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License