When it comes to its treatment of anarchist protesters like the ones who trashed Sproul Plaza the other night, UC Berkeley’s attitude amounts to this: We’d rather deal with broken windows than broken heads.

The result was about $100,000 in damage to the campus — and a worldwide image of UC police standing by as “black bloc” protesters fired bottle rockets at them and used police barricades as battering rams to break the windows of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, where right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak.

It wasn’t just the building that took damage. Some people who the anarchists concluded were there to hear Yiannopoulos were attacked, and one of the organizers of the Berkeley College Republicans, who were hosting the Breitbart News website editor, was splashed with red paint.

Police made no attempt to stop the attack or arrest any of the rioters. It was a legacy, in part, of the infamous incident during the Occupy protests of 2011 in which a UC Davis police officer shot pepper spray directly into the faces of peaceful, seated demonstrators on the campus quad.

After that PR disaster — which resulted in UC agreeing to a nearly $1 million lawsuit settlement — the university rewrote its police rules to mandate that officers use the minimum amount of force needed to ensure the maximum safety of everyone involved.

Taking on the anarchists at the Berkeley protest with batons and tear gas might have resulted in arrests, but it would also have resulted in injuries — and not just to black bloc types. The hundreds of demonstrators who were behaving peacefully would have been in the middle of the mess.

“We’re not talking about people who, if you try to arrest them, are going to say, ‘I’m sorry’ and just let themselves be cuffed and taken in,” UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said of the anarchists. “There would have been confrontations that involved innocent bystanders, and we would have had far more than the six injuries we had.”

Having the police scurry for cover may have been a bad look on TV, but it was an easy call for campus officials, Mogulof said. “It was too dangerous for everyone.”

Something happened Wednesday, however, that is causing law enforcement officials to re-examine their procedures.

In the past, when violent protesters have shown up at East Bay demonstrations, they’ve mixed with the crowd and used peaceful protesters as human cover. This time, the 100 or so black bloc anarchists marched brazenly up Bancroft Way and into Sproul Plaza after the protest was under way, lined up directly in front of their target and attacked.

It was as if they knew no one would stop them — which turned out to be the case.

“That is a real game changer,” Mogulof said.

Vegas betting line: Is the Raiders’ stadium deal in Las Vegas really dead — and does casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s announcement that he was walking away with his $650 million contribution actually end his involvement?

“I don’t know if it’s done or not done,” Steve Sisolak, chairman of the Clark County Commission in Nevada, told us. “And I don’t know if there is any appetite for the two parties to get back together.”

But after the acrimonious Adelson-Mark Davis breakup, Sisolak said everyone was ready to take a breather — at least through Sunday’s Super Bowl — “and maybe we can start to dialogue next week.”

Complicating any reunion, however, are NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments at a pre-Super Bowl news conference Wednesday that the league won’t allow anyone with gaming interests to own a piece of an NFL team and probably not a stadium, either.

The no-casino-mogul rule could toss a wrench into the Raiders’ efforts to find another big-money Vegas backer — like the oft-mentioned Fertitta brothers, Frank and Lorenzo, who just completed a $4 billion sale of the Ultimate Fighting Championship but still own a string of casinos.

“We’re not like Silicon Valley,” Sisolak said. “All the wealthy people here are gaming people.”

Ommm: Amid the tumultuous changes in Washington and her sudden job promotion, Oakland’s new interim schools superintendent, Devin Dillon, emailed the “Oakland Community” on her first day to describe “how jarring transition typically is.”

One example, she wrote: her experience after spending a month at a silent meditation retreat.

“Leaving the retreat center, I pulled up to a stoplight and saw a homeless man standing on the corner,” Dillon said. “I remember seeing him in a way that shook my entire core. I could feel his pain, his hunger, his desperation. Transition is like that … it heightens your senses and opens you up to fear and potential at the same time.”

So take a deep breath — and embrace the change.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross