Last week, Middlebury College administrators handed down the bare minimum punishments to students involved in a protest that led to the physical assault of a professor at the school. 

In all, 67 students were disciplined, according to PowerLine. However, none was suspended or expelled for the violent assault that injured their own professor:

Forty-one students received sanctions from the College administration for participating in the first stage of the disruptive protest in Wilson Hall. The remaining 26 students, who faced more serious consequences for actions in the hall and outside the building, were sanctioned by the College’s Community Judicial Board, which held group and individual hearings in May.

The sanctions ranged from “probation to official College discipline, which places a permanent record in the student’s file.”

One of Middlebury’s liberal professors, Allison Stanger, had invited noted author and libertarian scholar Charles Murray to speak to students. However, Murray's past writings triggered a mob intent on shutting him down. It worked, as he couldn’t speak over the noise and had to change venues. As Murray and Stanger left the new location to an awaiting car, the professor was attacked. Her hair was violently pulled and the force twisted her neck. She was treated at a hospital for a concussion and fitted with a neck brace.

But because some of the mob were wearing masks, and likely some of them were not students, Middlebury administrators couldn’t, or wouldn’t, identify the actual perpetrator(s). But as PowerLine blog noted, there’s more to it than just that:

We also know, however, that the administration was under pressure from some professors to be lenient [toward the students]. That being the case, and college administrators being college administrators, it’s possible that Middlebury either feigned ignorance or, more likely, didn’t make a strong effort to identify those who engaged in violence.

And while these fascist students get a simple slap on the wrist, Stanger is still suffering a concussion, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen explains in his op-ed on the matter:

From time to time, I email Allison Stanger. She answers always, but says she is not yet healthy enough to talk. On March 2, Stanger was escorting the social scientist Charles Murray, whose speech at Middlebury College, where she teaches, had just been shouted down, when the mob charged their car. “Someone pulled my hair,” she recounted, “while others were shoving me. I feared for my life.” The car was rocked. Stanger is still recovering from a concussion.

Cohen brilliantly labels the student protesters using their own social justice language: "cultural appropriationists." But these students are all about adopting the culture of fascism. 

He concludes:

I have known Stanger a bit over the years. To me, she personifies the scholarly life — fluent in Russian, fluent in Czech, fluent in critical ideas. She has her politics, avowedly Democratic, but she agreed to moderate the discussion with Murray solely because she believes in the robust exchange of views. Now she suffers because some protesters thought they were entitled to silence Murray and injure Stanger. Middlebury got a black eye, Stanger got a concussion — and we all got a warning.

Ari Fleischer also commented on this via Twitter: “Middlebury slaps everybody on the wrist. A letter in the files. No one IDd who engaged in violence. The mob wins.”