Reposted from The Wall Street Journal

The appearance of white nationalist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida sparked a declaration of a state of emergency by Florida’s governor. The event ended up generating little more than shouting and a few arrests. There was no violence.

Still, the massive preparations for potentially violent civil disobedience came with a hefty price tag. The school estimates it will have spent more than $500,000 on security—more than it pays for football games at a stadium that holds 90,000 people. The cost is part of a growing toll this year as a wave of right-wing speakers faces off against left-wing protesters.

That $500,000 will cover the hundreds of officers on campus from at least 44 agencies, some from as far away as Miami, command centers, technology, room and board for officers and extra barricades, said University of Florida spokeswoman Janine Sikes.

The Gainesville Police Department, which beefed up security in their jurisdiction, incurred additional costs, she said. Among those arrested were three men, who were charged with attempted homicide after they shot at a group of people protesting the speech. The police said at least two of the three men have shown connections to extremist groups.

Security for speakers at the University of California at Berkeley has cost the school more than $2 million this calendar year, compared with less than $200,000 a year for security at special events over the past several years; and Mr. Spencer’s appearance at Texas A&M University last December cost the school $60,000, according to the schools.

“This is not sustainable, this is absolutely not sustainable,” said University of Florida’s Ms. Sikes. “Public institutions cannot continue to pay this kind of money.”

Experts say the recent wave of speakers—beginning with an appearance in February at Berkeley of the former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos that prompted a riot—has changed the dynamic of such campus events.

“What happened at Berkeley was really a watershed moment,” said Sue Riseling, executive director of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. “There has been a paradigm shift.”

To be sure, high-profile speakers have always carried some security cost. When then-President Barack Obama spoke at Rutgers University in May 2016, the New Jersey school spent around $275,000 on security and traffic concerns, according to the school.

Schools have struggled to come up with a consistent answer to requests to speak, pitting their free-speech ideals against security concerns.

This month, Ohio State University rejected a request by Mr. Spencer to speak. The University of Cincinnati accepted his request. Texas A&M allowed Mr. Spencer to speak last year but rejected his request last month. The University of Florida initially rejected an event that Mr. Spencer was supposed to hold on campus, then changed course and allowed him to speak on Thursday after a judge reversed Auburn University’s rejection of Mr. Spencer.

Some schools are limiting the people who can invite speakers to those with an affiliation to the university. For instance, Mr. Spencer was invited to speak at Texas A&M last year by a former student with no active affiliation with the school. The university has since changed policies to limit those who can invite speakers to current students and faculty.

Amy Smith, spokeswoman for Texas A&M, said the school was torn about cancelling Mr. Spencer’s September event.

“We feel strongly about freedom of speech here, but at the same time it was clear there was a safety concern,” she said. “This is a national problem for public universities especially, right now we’re developing strategies in real time but there’s nothing conclusive about how to manage our security costs as we go forward.”

At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a group tasked with reviewing the school’s response to the “Unite the Right” rally in August that left one counterprotester dead, and a march on campus the night before, found school leaders had missed a “paradigm shift.”

“University officials’ frame of mind was shaped by a decades-long history of non-violent protests on Grounds that led them to approach the march with the assumption that it was constitutionally protected and should be accommodated with minimal police intrusion,” the report said. The result was “misaligned” judgments and an insufficient response, it said.

“What has changed is a recognition that some events may be motivated by a desire to incite a reaction that could turn violent,” said Peter McDonough, vice president and general counsel for the American Council on Education, which represents nearly 1,800 college and university presidents.

The costs to schools for the speakers this year are dramatically higher than the schools’ security expenses for prior high-profile speakers, said Dan Mogulof, a Berkeley spokesman. “It’s apples and oranges,” he said.

When a president speaks at the university, for instance, most of the security is handled by the Secret Service and any costs to the school are minimal. In the past three years, the school’s security costs for demonstrations have totaled less than $200,000 a year. Its biggest tally in recent years was $1.6 million in fiscal 2009, when a group of protesters were expelled from a grove of oak trees targeted to be cut down. The costs in fiscal 2012 was $744,000 and $619,000 in fiscal 2013.

In February, the school spent about $200,000 on security for an event for Mr. Yiannopoulos, the conservative commentator, then another $60,000 cleaning up after protesters ripped down light poles and tossed Molotov cocktails.

In April, when Ann Coulter was scheduled to speak at the school spent in excess of $600,000 for law enforcement to prevent another riot, said Mr. Mogulof. Of that amount, $414,000 was slated for outside law enforcement and $96,006 for equipment, room and board, according to the school.

This fall, the school shelled out another $600,000 more for security when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro spoke on campus and then more than $1 million when Mr. Yiannopolous scheduled a free speech week. That series of events fizzled when most of the scheduled speakers didn’t show. Still, the school was stuck with the bill.

Berkeley has convened a commission to determine how the school will balance security costs with free-speech protections going forward.

“We have a non-negotiable commitment to provide safety and security for our guests and the public at large and we have an equally unwavering commitment to free speech,” said Mr. Mogulof. “That puts us between a rock and a hard place; we can’t step back from either one.”

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