“Somehow, the ducks have more training than the UCPD,” said fourth-year student Ana Platt.
Photo by Jordan Whitlow
At the University of California Regents meeting on September 19, the University of California Police Department (UCPD) submitted a request for rubber ducks to be added to their inventory. Per this request, each UC campus will be equipped with 100 squeaky yellow rubber ducks, with a grand total of 1,000 ducks joining UCPD’s collective military arsenal.
It is speculated that UCPD will attempt to use these rubber ducks to de-escalate student protests. “This multipurpose, non-lethal form of weaponry has a plethora of great uses for crowd control purposes,” said UCPD representative Baxter Bluefield. “They can either be pelted at protestors or squeaked obnoxiously when their outcries for so-called ‘basic human decency’ grow a little too loud.”
“These protests have grown out of hand,” added an anonymous officer. “We have humbly requested that students voice their concerns on a quiet, private level, so as to not disrupt the status quo. But they haven’t listened! They’re forcing our hand!”
Rubber ducks are not the only form of combative technology UCPD has requested. The police departments of the Universities of California, Los Angeles and Merced requested to purchase a total of 13 kinetic weaponry rifles and almost 3,600 rounds of rubber bullets. UC Merced has already been cleared to purchase its share of artillery for this term.
“Hey, at least UCSD’s not like those guys,” said Bluefield. “Sure, our rubber ducks could hypothetically be loaded into a kinetic rifle and fired at the same force and velocity at protestors as your average rubber bullet, but we wouldn’t do that. Unless the Chancellor told us to.”
Furthermore, the University of California has requested to purchase drones for use at its Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco locations, presumably to be used to monitor student activity.
This “escalation in militarism” on the UC campuses was met with mass student outrage. “They’re acting like our biggest fans with the way they wanna keep tabs on us 24/7,” said an anonymous UC San Diego student. “If they start throwing those rubber ducks at me, I WILL eat them,” said another anonymous interviewee. “Not even joking, I love Peking duck.”
The influx of rubber ducks will be joining UCSD’s 60 patrol rifles, over 10,000 units of grain ammunition, and nearly 900 rounds of tear gas and pepper spray. The school also has access to the surveillance robots, acoustic and flash devices, chemical grenades, lethal artillery, and kinetic weaponry stockpiled across the UC campuses via the intercampus loan system. “But like, what do you need alla’ that for?” one student commented.
When asked why it was necessary to have this amount of military grade weaponry on a college campus, officers responded by saying that they “just love [their] guns so bad.” However, one student noted, “You know how much of that money could have been spent on things such as, I dunno… basic student needs? Someone’s got interesting priorities, that’s for sure.” Despite the pushback from students, UCPD has confirmed it intends to move forward with these plans. “What are they going to do about it, huh? Protest?” said Bluefield. “That’s what we’re buying all this stuff to prevent. Good luck, kiddos!”