Something called the White Student Union at Towson University has announced plans to conduct random nighttime patrols on the school’s campus.

Members of the group say they have taken this task upon themselves to protect the 20,000 or so students who attend the public school in Baltimore County, Maryland from serious crimes such as robbery and sexual assault, according to The Towerlight, Towson’s independent campus newspaper.

White Student Union members will outfit themselves with flashlights for the patrols, explains president Matthew Heimbach. No one will carry any weapons. However, female members will arm themselves with pepper spray. Some female members have also enrolled in unspecified self-defense courses.

Heimbach, by the way, goes by the much more impressive name “Commander Heimbach” on the group’s blog.

“One thing we’re doing at night is to have a male member accompany female members across campus or to night classes,” Commander Heimbach told The Towerlight. “Not because we’re terrified, but in college everyone is focused on themselves. We just want to make campus a better place. If we see a white person commit a crime against a person who is not white, we’re going to assist the person who was attacked every time.”

Heimbach added that members have been attending local gun ranges as a group to sharpen their skills, but not in a “military way.”

The Towerlight said it was unable to reach Towson University Police for comment.

At the school’s University Police webpage, though, you can download crime logs by month going back to June 2007. A cavalier perusal of the February and March 2013 logs reveals an array of generally predictable incidents including a good deal of theft, a smattering of sexual assault, one armed robbery, a peeping tom and a slew of intoxicated people.

At College Prowler, a site full of student-created reviews of undergraduate schools, Towson is ranked 1,087 out of a total of 1,309 schools — the bottom quartile — in the “safest campuses” category.

These nighttime campus patrols aren’t Towson’s White Student Union’s first foray into the news. “Commander Heimbach” and his troops found their way into the headlines recently when several group members attended the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

The fireworks occurred during a CPAC panel entitled “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?”

According to the Daily Mail, Heimbach and Scott Terry, another White Student Union member, defended slavery and signaled their support for racial segregation while K. Carl Smith of the Frederick Douglass Republicans was speaking about ways Republicans can reach minorities more effectively.

The leftist blog ThinkProgress captured the intense discussion that ensued. When ThinkProgress posted it, the exchange quickly went viral.

After the panel, Terry — who claims Jefferson Davis as an ancestor — told The Guardian that human slavery is a complex subject.

“I can’t make one broad statement that categorically it was evil all the time because that’s not true,” he said.

Terry added that Americans should have “freedom of association” when it comes to racial segregation.

“Diversity is not a strength,” Heimbach told the Baltimore Sun.

In Heimbach’s view, Republicans should focus on increasing white voter turnout instead of attempting to court minority voters. Blue-collar white voters are an especially vital voting bloc, he believes. Heimbach also supports very strict immigration controls.

Heimbach founded Towson’s controversial White Student Union in 2012. No faculty advisor would sponsor his confederacy, however, notes The Towerlight. So, while Towson has given the group permission to use school facilities, it’s not officially affiliated with the school.

“The mission of the WSU is to create an avenue for people to participate in political, cultural, educational, and social events to celebrate European heritage,” reads the “About the WSU” page on the group’s blog. “The organization invites people of all races, colors, and creeds to join together to celebrate European culture!”

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