What’s the deal with campus police? How did UW–Madison and hundreds of other universities across the country end up with their own deputized law enforcement agencies? And what does their existence mean for the communities they police, both on and off campus? Those are the questions we’re digging into on the inaugural season of Reorientation, an original narrative podcast from the Center for Campus History!
Year: 2024
Center for Campus History 2023-2024 Year in Review
The Center for Campus History (CCH) officially opened on July 1, 2023, but it grew directly out of four years of work as the Public History Project, a limited-term initiative commissioned by Chancellor Emerita Rebecca M. Blank. The Project’s mission was to uncover and give voice to the many groups across the university’s history who experienced and challenged discrimination and exclusion on campus. Since becoming a permanent center, the CCH has sought to continue and grow that mission, working to expand and enrich UW–Madison’s historical narrative by centering the voices, experiences, and struggles of marginalized groups. That work has taken many forms over the last year, from new archival research to classroom visits. Consider this Year in Review a sampling of what we’ve been up to.
“The Policy of Secrecy:” Parents, Administrators, and Spies Investigating Sexual Violence Before UWPD
There was snow on the ground when a Madison police officer and a Pinkerton agent arrived on campus in February 1911 to investigate the rape of a sorority house mother. Agents kept arriving over the coming months as more reports of sorority break-ins and sexual harassment of students rolled in. It was the dead of summer by the time the investigation wrapped up and the (at least) eight private detectives called in from The Pinkerton National Detective Agency and their rival, the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, returned to Chicago.