Episode 6: This season we’ve looked at more than 100 years of campus police history. But what about the present? What does having a full-blown law enforcement agency on campus mean for both the UW and the broader Madison community today? And what would it look like to imagine a future of campus safety without campus police?

Episode 5: It’s taken us five episodes, but we’ve finally gotten to the moment when UW-Madison campus police became real, official law enforcement. To understand how that happened, though, we need to talk about some wild 60’s protests and an unsolved murder. 

Episode 4: Ticketing cars or busting up parties is one thing. But the history of policing behavior on campuses also includes much darker chapters. At UW-Madison, campus police and administrators led a 15-year shadow operation to purge gay men from the university. 

Episode 3: What happens when people who aren’t cops start acting like cops? In some cases, they turn into cops. In the decades after WWII, UW-Madison saw its security operation grow from a handful of guards into a full-fledged department, seizing more and more authority to police behavior on campus.

Episode 2: Dueling detective agencies. Undercover sting operations. A string of attacks on campus kept under wraps. We’re going back to 1911, way before there was even a concept of campus police, to see where some very early seeds about police power, campus safety, and university priorities were being sown.

Episode 1: What’s the deal with campus police? Hundreds of universities in the US have their very own law enforcement agencies. But where did they come from? On the first episode of this season, we go from the days of night watchmen to the turbulent 1960’s and up to today to figure that out.