By: The Nightly Crew

Recently, our friends at The Daily wrote a University propaganda piece titled UWPD Data Shows 127% Increase in Residence Hall Trespassing. The entire article is a fumbling mess, and one of our more conspiratorial Nightly writers believed it to be softcore porn for UWPD Lieutenant Douglas Shulz. I’m not so convinced– although the entire article is just a series of interviews with pigs and reactionaries. In this article, we will deconstruct the fear-mongering rhetoric and discuss the liberatory role trespassing can play.

The main point of the Daily article is a supposed 127% increase in residence hall trespassing. UWPD’s Shulz bitches a little about it and tries to makes the police seem like the victim. In our recent collective memory, Shulz is notable for his presence at the December sit-in, where he and his colleagues injured and abused students, sending some to the hospital. Conducting an interview with an abuser like Shulz sets the tone for the rest of the article. It also makes The Daily’s pro-police and anti-people values clear to see.

This is followed by another interview, this time with HFS administration. They don’t waste a second before jumping straight to blaming workers for the increased trespassing. All culminated in an appeal for imposing more work on underpaid HFS employees.

The cherry on top of this article is the anti-homeless interview with a resident of Maple Hall. This resident, a light skinned woman, talked about a time when a man who was described in a way to make him seem visibly homeless was hanging out in the Maple hall lobby. After he asked her and her friend if he could send an email, they, according to the article, “refused his request and immediately called the RA on call, who informed them that they were aware of the threat and were in contact with UWPD.”

Referring to a person as ‘a threat’ simply for asking to send an email demonstrates how far our society has diverted from systems of care, instead relying on punitive measures and fear. All this person wanted was to send an email and maybe some shelter from the elements. It’s okay not to let someone use your computer if you don’t want to, however calling the authorities on them feeds directly into systems of oppression and will not help anyone, only providing you with a temporary illusion of security.

To the credit of the students in the story, their reactions are symptoms of the endless state propaganda we are exposed to. At the risk of using it for the second or third time in a Nightly article, a BSU statement on a performative safety town hall in 2022 outlined this well. 

“UWPD asks us to police eachother, telling us to be hyperconscious of ‘suspicious activity’ on campus and to actively call in tips anonymously… For administrators, we have to ask; when you’re concerned about safety, this means safety for whom?” 

Concerns and narratives over safety, trespassing, and crime almost always portray light-skinned and upper-middle-class women’s safety as being in direct opposition to the very existence of marginalized groups and the wider working poor. For anyone interested in reading more about this idea I highly recommend reading our article: White Women and Safety: Don’t Fall for the Right-Wing Dog Whistle.

Trespassing as a Tool For Social Change

As the government and institutions like the University of Washington continue to support the systems of oppression that force people into poverty and homelessness, co-opting university spaces for shelter, mutual aid, and other radical uses is a must.

University classrooms sit empty most of the time when classes are not in session. During the summers, much of HFS student housing also sits empty. A radical revisioning of this space sees the potential to repurpose it as shelter for the community, both long-term and short-term during extreme weather. UW will not let this happen under their watch, so be sneaky.

In The Daily’s Article, UWPD literally admits that it’s hard for them to charge trespassers. “Especially right now, the prosecutors are not filing a lot of our trespassing cases,” Shulz told the Daily. That being said, be careful and take necessary precautions if planning on doing something more radical.

So make a habit of trailing people into dorms and university buildings, propping the door open, and inviting strangers, comrades, and community to come inside. It’s not enough to just ignore the University’s propaganda around ‘public safety.’ Instead, we need to unlearn it. We need to organize against it. We can subvert university spaces and university resources to support communal efforts.

The Nightly celebrates the 127% increase in trespassing and dares the community to aim for 200%.