At the university just a few miles from me the other evening:

Over 200 counter-protesters gathered Jan. 21 on King Lane Northeast outside Thomson Hall to rally against Turning Point USA (TPUSA) guest speaker Olivia Krolczyk.

TPUSA cancelled the scheduled event after unknown individuals pulled Thomson Hall’s fire alarm and threw noisemakers into the building’s entryway. After the building was evacuated and reentered, unknown organizers broke a window in the lecture hall and threw noisemakers into the lecture hall via the broken window. 

The police shut the whole thing down. This has been another evening of Protest Theater, please remember to take all your belongings with you as you leave the scene.

“The University of Washington is committed to free exchange of ideas and the principles of academic freedom, in accordance with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, including some whose views may be considered controversial,” UW spokesperson Victor Balta said in an email Jan. 22. 

…

Balta concluded that these disruptions may have been an attempt to access overly-dramatized content.  

“Informed discussion and debate are encouraged on our campus, however, it is clear that presenters and disruptors are, in some cases, seeking to antagonize one another in ways that provide dramatic content for their social media feeds,” Balta said in an email. “Tuesday’s scheduled speaker told the student newspaper that she was ‘excited‘ the event was shut down.”   

Or to put it another way, Team Fake Women Are Women took the bait.

H/t J.A.