So not justifying this response, but they have snipers out for EVERY football game. I think it is standard practice for large gatherings. You can make your own opinions on this, but this isn't a unique thing.
For a protest on a university campus? I mean, the US already has a great history with innocent students being murdered for speaking out, so... Yeah, not unusual for the US.
Europe has snipers at football stadiums too. One of the first, mainstream, acknowledgements of them was when a protestor parachuted onto the field during the Germany-France Euro match in 2020. When people got mad they said it was common practice to have snipers at most events of this size.
Yeah, cuz thrice-weekly mass shootings are a US thing. I'm not getting into a chicken-and-egg circkejerk with anyone about which came first, but as long as "we the people" are gonna keep shooting large gatherings of our fellow citizens...especially if we think they disagree with us, then any controversial or highly public event is gonna be crawling with armed police...including snipers.
Honestly, I'd have snipers at any large gathering. Mass shootings/stabbings/drivings/bombings have recently taken place in Europe, Russia, and other parts of the world. It's good to have security when there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people gathered in a place (eg, the Olympics, mega concerts, wtc)
Apparently the issue is people asked the University if there were snipers, at 8:15 pm they replied there weren’t, and later said they deployed them at 10 pm.
More reasonable than what it looked like but still kinda crazy, at least from my outside perspective.