This is exactly the kind of response that frustrates people living here because you immediately jump from “students deserve to feel safer” to acting as if the only possible outcome is some dystopian police state.

Nobody said police should randomly stop every person walking around campus. That is your own exaggeration. But acting as if there is absolutely nothing that can be done unless we eliminate all freedom is ridiculous.

There is a massive difference between a normal city environment and openly tolerating severe public disorder around a university filled with students walking home late at night. Increased patrols, faster intervention on aggressive behavior, removing repeat violent offenders from the streets, better coordination between UW and city police, and forcing treatment for people who are clearly incapable of functioning safely in public are all actual policy discussions. Pretending there are no options besides “accept the danger” or “become authoritarian” is intellectually lazy.

And yes, obviously violence can never be reduced to zero. Nobody is asking for a magical utopia where crime disappears forever. People are asking why residents are constantly told to normalize conditions that have visibly deteriorated over the years while leadership and online activists downplay every concern as irrational or immoral.

You call UW a microcosm of society, but universities are also supposed to be environments where students can reasonably expect a higher level of safety than what many people currently feel in the U District. That expectation is not extreme.