The University of Wisconsin Center for Campus History explores the origins of campus police in the first season of its new podcast ‘Reorientation,’ which focuses on telling lesser-known stories about the university’s history.

All six episodes of the first season have been released as of Monday.

The first episode, titled ‘Real Cops’ begins by referencing May 1 at Library Mall, when police showed up to the pro-Palestine encampment in riot gear and pushed through the crowd with shields and batons in efforts to order protesters to remove their tents. 

Podcast co-hosts Kacie Lucchini Butcher and Siobhan Ryan segue from this introduction into touching on the history of police involvement in protests on university campuses and the origin of campus police enforcement as a whole, including the similarities between campus police and “real cops.”

The first episode details how the rich and complex history of police enforcement at UW garners a six-episode narration explaining unique stories surrounding campus police that take the listener from the first hints of university security in 1911 to 1960s protests, all the way up to understanding UWPD’s role today. 

According to a Center for Campus History post introducing ‘Reorientation,’ the podcast bases its content on findings from archival research, interviews with experts and scholars and stories from the past.

The Badger Herald reached out to UWPD for a statement regarding the department’s involvement in the podcast, to which the Executive Director of Communications Marc Lovicott wrote in an emailed statement that UWPD was not consulted during the podcast’s production.

“We recognize that there are a wide range of opinions and views about the legacy and current state of policing in the U.S.,” Lovicott wrote. “UWPD would have shared its views on these issues, the complexities in campus public safety, and advances made by UWPD, but was not consulted by the Center for Campus History podcast project.”