UC Davis Chancellor Katehi hastily constructs another bullshit moat to help protect herself and her dwindling palace guard:
UC Davis placed Police Chief Annette Spicuzza on administrative leave Monday in the wake of controversy over the pepper-spraying of student protesters last week by campus police officers.
The move by UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi came less than a day after she put two UC Davis police officers on leave.
“As I have gathered more information about the events that took place on our Quad on Friday, it has become clear to me that this is a necessary step toward restoring trust on our campus,” Katehi said in a statement.
Spicuzza had initially defended the police action, telling reporters Saturday, “The students had encircled the officers. They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out.”
Katehi has resisted calls by some UC Davis faculty members for her to resign.
I think we’re just a few days away from her screaming “It’s just a flesh wound, come back you cowards” from a university podium.
cathyx
She needs to place herself on administrative leave. Do you think she will?
MikeJ
The cops plead “just following orders” so the chief gets a vacation. Who did he get his orders from? She already said she’s responsible for everything that happened.
TooManyJens
@cathyx: No, the University just needs her too darn much.
scav
KateHi? KateBye!
Elizabelle
Katehi is not a Republican member of congress.
Therefore, the chances of her riding this out are slim, and better to clean house earlier and more thoroughly.
I wonder if she might meet with the protestors, and listen carefully to what they have to say. Whether she goes or not, it would be a good step. Has she done so?
Caz
She’s a f’ing coward! If she stands by the police action, then stick to it and don’t back down when people challenge it. Stand for what you believe and defend your position. She still supports what the police did, she just doesn’t have the courage to take a position that is being challenged. It might only be a vocal minority, but she’s flip-flopping to appease the criticism.
I support the police action, and I’ll defend that position. Just because someone is peacefully disrupting people’s lives doesn’t mean we don’t try to put an end to the disruption. All these occupy protests have gone too far – it’s not about free speech anymore, it’s about disrupting business, workers, travel, leisure, etc. They think by causing some chaos, they are really putting it to teh man. And they have a little Woodstock partying along with it. Great times for a spoiled, unemployed, trust fund brat. Not so fun for people who work for a living.
Oh, it’s also great for ivory tower, holier-than-thou, progressive bloggers….like you.
If they were at your place of work or residence, you’d have a different view, and I’m damned sure you’d want the police to clear them out.
Pepper spray is the lowest level of force they can use. What should they do – try to reason with these idiots, convince them to go get a job?
Paul in KY
Another underling goes over the side of the sleigh. Oliphant had a great cartoon back in the Reagan years of him throwing the courtiers over the side to appease the chasing wolfpack.
This seems to be about the same thing.
IMO, if she really wanted to understand the student’s suffering, she’d allow someone to give her a dose. Won’t kill her & would make her seem sympathetic to their situation.
Edit: I would volunteer to give Caz a good dose, so he/she can gain an appreciation of non-violent protest.
TooManyJens
@Caz:
They were at the place of work and/or residence of thousands of people, and yet somehow most people on campus don’t seem to agree with you that nonviolent protesters should be violently attacked. We’ll make sure to note you down as an authoritarian bootlicker, though, since you’re so determined to make yourself known as such.
Emma
@Caz: Ah… the Sixties called. They want their insane conservatives back. Time machine this way.
Yutsano
I have protestors every Tuesday at my work Caz. Like clockwork. I still somehow manage to get my work done with no disruption whatsoever. Your facile appeals to authority are just bleatings of desperation. The world is shifting again, and it’s away from your authoritarian bullshit. Now, tell us again oh almighty atheist cocksucker of Rand why we should bother with you?
TooManyJens
@Yutsano:
::tilts head::
Was there something about Ayn Rand I didn’t know?
cathyx
@Caz: And if people’s rights to protest get taken away like you want, and you lose your rights to peaceful assembly, who are you going to turn to when your civil rights get taken away? Not this blog, because this too will be gone when that happens. Why do you hate the constitution so much?
Brian R.
There’s a group of anti-abortion protesters who block the path to my daughter’s daycare three times a week. (It’s located in the same office park as a women’s clinic.) They even wave giant signs with pictures of aborted fetuses on them — right in front of my four year old daughter.
And yet somehow, I’ve managed to make my way around them without incident, Caz. I never had to pepper spray any of them.
I guess that’s because I’m not a fucking moron.
kasnarski
will i ever get out of moderator hell?
Punchy
I think the problem lies in the disputed but probable fact that the pepper spray came out 60 nanoseconds faster than they had anticipated.
numbskull
I don’t know that I’m holier than thou, but by your statements I can tell you that you are worst than most.
See, you keep projecting your stunted outlook on others. Many, many people would rather be inconvenienced in order to allow free speech in a meaningful manner. It’s happened to me, and I was mature enough to see the bigger picture. You are not.
By the laws of California, it is illegal to use pepper spray except in self-defense. It specifically cannot be used for compliance. You have been told this so many times in other threads that I’m beginning to wonder about your comprehension capabilities.
Bullsmith
Shit flows downhill. Sometimes, though, it piles up sufficiently to affect those at the top.
scav
@TooManyJens:
Doesn’t matter, her devotees aren’t slowed down by mere reality (much like neutrinos). I fancy Caz has her in a Naughty Catholic Schoolgirl outfit and handcuffs and truncheons feature prominently.
Hungry Joe
Thanks for the update, Caz. I didn’t realize that the students’ backgrounds had been made public. Things have apparently changed a lot since I attended the University of California — I never, to my knowledge, so much as met a “trust fund brat.” Not that such hypothetical brats, if protesting peacefully, deserve to get pepper sprayed. And not that university students are looking for jobs right now. (They are, I believe, attending a university.) And not that decent jobs aren’t damn near impossible to find anyway, which is part of the point of the protests …
Now that I take a step back, I’m impressed that you were able to cram so many kinds of fail into one comment.
Chyron HR
@Caz:
I’m sure calling people “trust fund brats” polls really well, but I don’t know that a political party run entirely by people living off trust funds really wants to go there.
Yutsano
@TooManyJens: if you think about it, it makes sense no? :)
Bullsmith
@Caz:
Not big on the bill of rights, our Caz.
Waldo
Best case scenario: She eventually suspends the whole UC Davis police department — down to the last switchboard operator and Explorer Scout — before getting fired herself. Then she gets forcibly removed by the same cops she suspended. With pepper spray. On Youtube.
Martin
The UC President came out pretty strongly in response to this incident. So did the Chancellor of UC Merced.
Katehi missed her window. She needed to be leading that chorus of faculty and administrators, and now she looks like she’s being led by it. If she’s not out directly as a result of this, she’ll be out shortly due to it.
Orthogonal to how the situation was handled on campus, what really will be her undoing here is that the photos and video are so clear, powerful, and irrefutable. They’re headlining a lot of news sites. It’s not the policies and actions that are taking her out, but the optics. That’s a sad state, but that’s what it is.
Run that across the student protests in CA over escalating fees, and the public is being reminded that those students are paying quite a lot of money to the folks pepper spraying them. In that way, things are changing quite fundamentally. Back during the 60s, students were at Berkeley quite nearly free of charge, and so they were already receiving a benefit from the state, and arguments that those students who were shutting down parts of the institution were violating some unspoken pact weren’t entirely unreasonable. But students today are paying vastly more than the state kicks in. That argument which may have carried in the 60s doesn’t work any more. These students are more customers than they are state beneficiaries.
Captain Haddock
Paid leave. Thanksgiving week. Yeah, that will teach a lesson.
Darkrose
@TooManyJens: I have Caz pied, but I find this amusing. They were at my workplace. If I weren’t on medical leave and unable to walk, I’d have gone out there on my lunch break to support them.
Dork
Why does a chancellor need 2 middle names?
Bullsmith
Wait a second, aren’t Trust Fund Brats the Job Creators of the future?
Darkrose
@Martin: More to the point, these students’ parents are paying. This is the helicopter parent generation, with parents who think it’s reasonable to call the school to get grades changed for their little darlings. I strongly suspect the Chancellor’s inbox has multiple emails from lawyers this morning.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
From Fallows;
-link
According to that blog, Katehi is planning to meet face to face with students this afternoon on the quad. Should be interesting. I was surprised by the critical views of the minister – well worth a read.
Alison
@Bullsmith: Only the Republican ones. Liberal trust funds only pay for abortions and Whole Foods gift cards.
cathyx
@Bullsmith: No, they’re future Fox news contributors and WaPo columnists.
Nutella
Standard cut-and-paste rant irrelevant to this
incidentpolice riot. This was a protest by students in the middle of a large open area on their own campus. No one was ‘disrupted’ except the students who were attacked.Unhinged and inaccurate ranting like this makes it unlikely anyone will believe anything you say. For example, if you claimed that OWS in Manhattan was disrupting local businesses we would assume that was another hysterical lie like this one.
eemom
oh shit. I just found out she’s Greek.
: (
ETA: On the bright side, my mother has always said never to trust blonde Greeks. : )
Joey Maloney
Bullshit moat? Somebody call Amy Alkon!
Svensker
@numbskull:
Not to be mean or anything but, if that’s true, you chose your nym well.
Bullsmith
@cathyx:
I see, the future leaders of society, then. Morally superior also, too.
Actually the distinction that they are unworthy of respect, despite their wealthy whiteness and rightness, by dint of their dirty fucking hippiness explains Caz’ disdain for them pretty well to me. (Thanks Alison)
Guster
They were defecating on the sidewalk. And the Occupy Pipe Bomber arrested in the other day in NYC is a Davis alum.
Gin & Tonic
This thing clearly is still on a sharp upward trajectory. It just rose to the top item on Google News, and the video was in the all-important first half-hour of the Today show. I’m having a hard time seeing how Linda Katehi survives the week.
aimai
@Brian R.:
Well, maybe you should pepper spray them. Just a suggestion.
aimai
Svensker
@eemom:
You didn’t take one look at her face and know that? Or listen to the walk video when she speaks at the end? She’s from Athens.
Gunga Dean
@cathyx: Or future recipients of wingnut welfare
Scott P.
Sullivan’s fallen off the wagon again — more Bell Curve bullshit:
Link.
cathyx
@Bullsmith: Which is another reason why he should be behind the protests. He obviously hates the 1% because trust fund kids are usually in the 1%. I think he’s a little confused. Fox news does that to people.
Warren Terra
Fixt.
eemom
@Svensker:
Are you implying we all look alike? : )
On the brighter side, my mother HAS always said never to trust blonde Greeks. And that explains Arianna too.
lamh31
this is OT, but has to do with college kids schooling their “elders” so it fits in a round-a-bout way.
Bachmann gives students a 101 on issues, then gets lectured
This kids have single-handedly re-ignited my faith in the younger generation. BTW, check out the photo that goes along with this article. That young lady seated to Bachmann’s left is my hero of the day!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Svensker: I feel better now for having made that assumption (that Katehi is Greek of ancestry) based on appearance, though I’ve not watched the video with sound.
Kane
Sadistically pepper-spraying unarmed peaceful students exercising their core First Amendent right is part of the trickle-down effect of what happens when a congress and a DOJ refuse to hold the Bush administration accountable for their torture policy. The result is that the police state becomes embolden and unafraid to douse peaceful teens and seniors with pepper-spray and beat unarmed protesters with billy clubs and the republican party adopts torture as part of their party platform.
Svensker
@eemom:
My MIL is a blonde Greek and boy has she heard horrible comments when she visits the homeland (when they don’t realize she speaks Greek).
Amir Khalid
It’s been said here that Chancellor Katehi’s job is not so much to run UC Davis day-to-day, but rather to be a rainmaker, a salesperson who persuades wealthy alumni and other benefactors to nourish the university with injections of their Vitamin M. Well, the New York Times reports that
If these benefactors make it clear they want UC Davis to be rid of her, then that, more than direct outrage over what she let the campus police to at Occupy Davis, might bw what drives her out of office. But then she might want some face-saving interval of time, maybe a matter of months, before handing in her notice.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@eemom:
I always thought that was never trust gifts bearing Greeks.
Walker
@Darkrose:
This. They are also the generation where parents feel free to sue the school if their child is accused of cheating.
David in NY
@Amir Khalid:
Right. This actually works. See, Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum.
Joey Maloney
Al Franken described Arianna Huffington as “a Greek-born blonde but not, strictly speaking, a blonde-born Greek.”
celticdragonchick
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
More like “Don’t trust Greeks trying to dump credit swap derivatives”
Warren Terra
@David in NY:
IIRC, what happened to Brandeis was that their endowment and donator bases were simultaneously scuppered by Madoff (because so many of his victims were wealthy Jews and Jewish philanthropic funds and organizations), and so Brandeis, desperate for money and seeing its usual sources unable to help, proposed to sell some valuable art. Because of a combination of new fundraising intended to avoid thi eventuality and threats of withdrawn support if they sold the art, they reconsidered. But it’s a fairly different situation.
RalfW
Also today from James Fallows (who I think is the very center of sane over there at the Atlantic. Great writing on a ton of varied topics).
‘The UC Davis Policeman’s Actions Are a Huge Gift to the Chinese Government‘
John PM
Ironic that one of the first casualties of the Occupy Movement could be a school administrator instead of a corporate CEO, but then again maybe there is not much difference between the two nowadays.
Warren Terra
@lamh31:
I don’t know the shirt, but the red star gives me pause. Are you sure it isn’t one of those ironic T-shirts the kids wear, presenting Obama as a Socia|ist? After all, it appears that she might be sitting on stage, usually a position reserved for event organizers (though I’d expect organizers of a College Republican event to dress more formally).
Brandon
@Gin & Tonic: she survives because there is no one to fire her except the Board of Regents and the UC Board is stuffed chock-a-block with 1%’ers who love them some hippy punching, both figurative & literal. She survives because the UC Board is not going to punish her for doing what each and every one of them has wanted to do for their entire lives. The only way she doesn’t survive is if the UC Board feels vulnerable because of her, but they were protected by the UC President’s strong statement. My guess is that they are telling her to shut up, stay away from the media and try to ride it out. Her biggest problem though is whether she has lost just the liberal faculty or all the faculty. The currencies of universities are prestige and if the faculty at Davis feel their prestige is threatened, she may not last.
MCA
I think the Chancellor’s reaction (the police must have been right; oh, wait, the police didn’t act correctly? unpaid leave; I’m too important to step down) has been comically poor and doesn’t make UC-Davis look very good. But I’m missing the step where she has to be fired immediately.
There are situations where bad acts in an institution indicate a level of negligence at the very top that warrants removal. I’m just not sure this is one. Not to minimize it, but some kids (totally undeservedly) got pepper sprayed. That sucks, and should piss us off, but this isn’t Kent State. It’s campus police, whom Katehi nominally controls, but really, what level of involvement do university presidents have with the protocol and s.o.p.’s of campus police? They have a lot of other responsibilities and it’s not as though this sort of thing is happening on their campuses as a regular feature. Now, if she gave an order to go ahead and pepper spray the kids, can her pronto. But my suspicion is she was led by the campus police to think this was a situation that needed resolution, so she approved removing the tents, and did so naively not seeing that that would inevitably lead to hooligan cops just itching to get some “action” overstepping bounds.
That’s rather poor judgment and weak leadership, but mistakes happen. Is there something in the news that’s indicated it was her idea things would go down this way? Shouldn’t we be focusing more on the head of campus police, and this conversation be more about how militarized our police forces have become?
If the spraying and then the subsequent pr mess she’s created, over time, convinces enough trustees that she’s permanently damaged the school’s reputation, go ahead and fire her. What’s behind the need for this to happen by tomorrow?
MikeBoyScout
WOW! Just WOW.
From Kristin Stoneking CA House Director and Campus Minister Weblog
Thanks for the linkee! a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
numbskull
@Svensker: ?? Just trying to give him/her the benefit of the doubt.
JustMe
@eemom: She has shamed our tribe!
She is an extraordinarily accomplished academic. It’s sad because she did everything “right” and now has basically wrecked her career by making this moral fumble.
rb
@Caz: If they were at your place of work or residence, you’d have a different view, and I’m damned sure you’d want the police to clear them out.
Nope.
Freedom isn’t free. Hadn’t you heard?
Martin
@Brandon:
There’s a decent likelihood of a no confidence vote of her by the faculty. No way she survives that. The Regents would have to remove her because she’d be unable to do her job at that point.
I’d say it’s likely that she’ll fail such a vote, as things now stand. She needs to be acting decisively here, and she’s not doing it. She’s got 2 days.
Yevgraf
While I still have nothing good to say about the peculiar focus on maintaining Occupy encampments, the actual helpfulness of Western protests and the wisdom of surrounding the equivalent of mall cops while leaving no exits, I will say that the failure of the campus PO-lice to mace the center does seem counterintuitive.
libarbarian
OT:
More football-fan awesomeness
Maybe America deserves whats coming.
Oh, and Wall Street Delenda Est!
bin Lurkin'
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: No, never trust geeks bearing gifs..
Martin
@JustMe:
It’s really damn hard to be a seriously competent administrator. It’s also really damn hard to be an extraordinarily accomplished academic. Getting both in the same person is exceeding rare.
pete
@MCA: What’s behind the need for this to happen by tomorrow?
It would just be heartwarming to see some semblance of responsibility, whether on her part (by resigning) or the Trustees (by firing her). As an individual, she’s an apparatchik, overpaid and apparently undercompetent. As a symbol, she’s just dandy. I can feel sorry for the person, but that symbol’s gotta go.
Dave
I don’t know if this was mentioned in an earlier thread, but this whole Davis mess was covered (albeit briefly) on the Today show this morning.
Katehi is a dead woman walking. No one ever survives their bullshit cocoon once faced with a blast of Today-level media attention. It’s one thing to bitch about it across blogs, it’s another thing to see sitting kids being hosed down with pepper spray while drinking your morning coffee.
She’ll be out by the end of the week.
MikeJ
@JustMe:
She’s not a competent administrator if she makes “moral fumbles” like gassing college kids.
Martin
@libarbarian: Wait, the victim still lives in PA? Shit…
Protip: If you accuse a cardinal of raping you, at the very least get out of the Vatican before the news hits. Ideally, get out of Rome and Italy as well. Not Mexico. Or Ireland. Maybe give Japan a try.
It shouldn’t be that way, but, well, it is.
scav
Interesting little take on her UI kefuffle in light of her behavior recently. Don’t miss the first comment, or, at the very least, the reply to the first comment.
Why U. of Illinois Scandal Muddied UC Davis Chancellor
rb
@Martin: How droll.
Walker
@Martin:
Meh. I have lasted through presidents that got no confidence votes (not at my current institution, but a previous one). If the Trustees have the president’s back, there is nothing you can do about it.
slag
@MCA: FWIW, I’ve been wondering the same thing. I understand the need for accountability, but then, what about the need for accountability at Berkeley? Why aren’t we hearing as much about that? Is it because UC Davis students were sitting down when they were assaulted and UC Berkeley students were standing up? If so, that distinction seems rather trivial. If not, what is it about this woman, in particular, that makes her so abhorrent in relation to all the others who have sat by and allowed their citizens to be terrorized by their employees?
JustMe
@MikeJ: I was referring more to her academic career as a researcher and professor. If she had retired as a Dean of Engineering somewhere, she’d be revered as a historic giant in her field, to say nothing for her being a model for women in engineering. But it seems that, dating back to her time as provost at UofI, she lacks a sense of moral judgment or ability to take responsibility for anything.
pete
@slag: I think you are looking in the wrong direction. What’s different is the reaction of the students, both in the moment and in the later shaming. I keep saying that, partly in the hope that others will take the hint.
Ben Cisco
yIt vo’ tuH | My Ready Room
__
UPDATE: Per John Cole at Balloon-Juice, Katehi has now conveyed UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza underneath the wheels of a rather large personnel-moving, uh, conveyance…
polyorchnid octopunch
@Martin: Well, the guy’s 17. It’s not like he’s got a lot of control over that. And I can easily see how some people’s parents might not realise just how morally fucked Americans are around college football and child rape.
Sour Kraut
This just feels weird. Katehi was my Professor in electric circuit design at the University of Michigan back in the 90s. She seemed nice enough then. I never would have guessed she had an ugly streak, although it seems to be dawning on her that she frakked up big time.
trollhattan
@RalfW:
In more ways than perhaps even he knows.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/07/4035042/chinese-are-now-the-largest-group.html
RalfW
@John PM: Well, if Rev. Stoneking is recalling accurately her conversation with the Associate Vice Chancellor, then yes, there’s not a lot of light inbetween corporate CEOs and big U Chancellors:
slag
@pete: If you’re suggesting that she’s more on the hot seat because she got routed by a better organized group of Occupiers, then that’s fine. But I don’t know that I want the behavior of my leadership to depend on the behavior of those who hold less responsible positions.
Quite frankly, I don’t care if the kids were shouting yo mama epithets, mocking cops with bunny ears, or just sitting silently with their arms crossed. There’s no excuse for the violence that was inflicted on any of them by those who are supposed to be in positions of authority.
Walker
@RalfW:
That means getting international students to come here, not off-shoring. International students pay big money and get little financial aid. It used to be that they just came and you didn’t need to do anything about it. But now the good ones are staying in their countries and you have to actively pursue them.
My department talks about this all the time. The competition for good international students is fierce. Whenever one of our faculty members visits a university in Asia, there is at least one other faculty member from our competitor universities in the top 5 there as well.
MikeJ
@slag: Perhaps it shouldn’t matter that the students were polite and respectful, but in practice it certainly does.
Bullsmith
@slag:
Morally there’s no difference, but in the PR battle that is public opinion, these Davis students have risen far, far above the normal protest. Both in how they took the pepper spraying and in how they confronted the Chancellor are models of PR brilliance. The images need no explanation- the students know what’s coming and take it in silent dignity. The outraged crowd are unified and peaceful, using only their voices to, rightly, shame the campus cops. Later, they express their outrage at the administration that shut down their right to free speech with casually brutal violence by shaming her with silence.
The story from the authorities is always that the rowdy ingrate hippies started it. The UC Davis footage is about as eloquent a rebuttal to that standard charge as we’ve seen recently. It’s not Tianamen square (sorry for the spelling) but it’s pretty damn powerful stuff. The moral victory is clear. No one with eyes is really going to find any grey area in these images. You have to impose it yourself.
trollhattan
Today’s UC Davis rally began at noon, with one of the spraying victims speaking first. The local paper has a Twitter feed but I don’t glean anything useful from it. Here’s their coverage, such as it is.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/21/4071197/uc-davis-rally-each-speaker-gets.html
slag
@Bullsmith: I don’t know. I’m a public opinion. And I really wonder whether deposing this leader while leaving all the rest of them standing offers much of a solution to this problem. I don’t think we can or should hang our hopes on the idea that all the victims of the world will also be saints.
Mark
@Walker:
Really, really? Really? Do you really look at a bunch of kids who non-violently standing up for something they believe in getting pepper-sprayed by some savage fascist cop and think “helicopter parents” and “these goddamn kids don’t take responsibility for nothing no more”?
Given the ridiculous abuse of power we just saw by school administrators, I think students might benefit from having an adult – lawyer or parent – to help them assert their rights in the face of those who would deny them.
Bullsmith
@slag:
Of course we can’t hope everyone’s a saint, and in no way am I arguing that the Chancellor of UC Davis a meaningful figure in the large scheme of things.
But sometimes people do act like saints, and they deserve to be noticed for it. Ghandi is a historic figure for a reason. His ability to rise above doesn’t make other causes somehow illegitimate, but the image he projected via his words and actions certainly helped his cause. In their own small way, these Davis students have become the sympathetic face of the OWS movement for however brief a moment in time. The reason I think that’s important is it flies directly in the face of the Fox version of events (which is unchanged from Nixon.) The lie is that these people are a violent threat, even the Chancellor gave credence to that lie (or fell for it, likely a bit of both) by claiming to be trapped inside a building.
To me, an effective and honest symbol is something to be applauded, as is the exposure of a dishonest and ineffective one, as the Chancellor seems to be here. Sure they’re just symbols, but that doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant either.
DCrate
@Caz:
FFS!! It is idiocy like this that makes the OWS protests all the more important. Keep it up genius and hopefully we will have OCCUPY EVERYWHERE. Then we can listen to you and laugh as you pathetically attempt to punch hippies and miss.
mamayaga
@MikeJ:
I recall the Teatards screaming, spitting, breaking up town halls, spitting on Congressmen, waving racist signs and guns. Not polite and respectful. Somehow I missed the pepper spray.
I keep seeing all this analysis that says the cops are over-militarized, oversupplied with sub-lethal toys, undertrained, and on a hair trigger, and that accounts for beating, gassing, and shooting not only non-violent protesters, but bystanders and reporters as well. But that did not happen to the Teatards. In that case there was an implicit understanding about whose side both the protesters and the cops were on, an understanding that led to a very wide tolerance of rather bad behavior. It’s not just that the cops are reacting in brutal, illegal, and unconstitutional ways, it’s that they are doing it in the service of one political point of view. The cops are not there to reinforce political orthodoxy. This is the essence of a shocking violation of First Amendment rights.
Xenos
@celticdragonchick:
But you can trust Greeks bearing bearer bonds, unless brokered by Bear Stearns… Oh, nevermind.
As for Arianna, her money comes from a family newspaper business in Athens, one that never had a bad word to say about the Junta, back in the day. There is a Private Eye profile out there, back before Stassinopolous met Huffington, that is so scathing that it is probably what sent her scurrying our direction some 25 years ago…
Darkrose
@Brandon:
The problem is that her job is promoting the school’s brand in order to attract donors. So far, all she’s attracted is a wave of negative publicity. She has failed at her job.
I still say she’s going to get a “better opportunity” at UCOP.
trollhattan
@trollhattan:
Chancellor is speaking now:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/21/4071197/uc-davis-rally-each-speaker-gets.html#ixzz1eNRn8gDy
Nutella
@mamayaga:
An interesting point in support of this and in opposition to the claim by the universities and Yevgraf that it’s the camping that must be stopped: Duke has an elaborate and officially sanctioned campsite for students to get in line for basketball games. It’s regulated by students and supported by the university and has been running since 1986 without ever being driven off by the police for ‘health and safety’ violations.
via
My favorite part is this: “Duke has installed Wi-Fi service and Ethernet ports in the lightposts so that students can participate in tenting without falling behind in their schoolwork”
Darkrose
@Mark:
Uh, if you read the rest of the comment, that wasn’t at all what I was saying. My point is that given the way the parents of these kids are involved in their childrens’ lives, they’re not going to sit passively by when their kids are hurt. They’re going to go after the university for this, and Katehi is going to take the fall.
Darkrose
@Walker:
In a way, though, that is off-shoring, at least for a public university. First and foremost, the mission of the UC system is supposed to be to provide access to higher education for California residents. There’s a finite number of spaces available, and if you prioritize international and out-of-state students who will pay full tuition, some in-state students who would previously have made the cut won’t because of the larger applicant pool.
trollhattan
Aaaand, an apology. Another in what will doubless be a series.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/21/4071197/uc-davis-rally-each-speaker-gets.html#ixzz1eNYxAgPw
pete
@slag: Hey, you asked why she was getting attention. That’s all I was responding to. I absolutely agree that “deposing this leader while leaving all the rest of them standing” isn’t a solution — it’s an inspiration to go find more solutions.
Everyone else should not necessarily do what the UC Davis students did and are doing; but they can and (I think) should and (I hope) will find their own way to act. And if the Chancellor of the UC system jumps in preemptively, well, good. That’ll still leave plenty to do. /lunch, back2work
Less Popular Tim
@Amir Khalid:
This. At most Universities, a Chancellor or Dean’s job is pretty much 95% about bringing in money. If this news harmed the school’s capacity to bring in money, she has failed in her job and will be gone, regardless of how much the rest of the administration may like or dislike hippy-punching or a police state.
SectarianSofa
@Yevgraf:
I’m not sure what the implication is here — are you saying the the UC Davis cops were ‘security guard’-type of employees rather than sworn police officers? I’m not sure if it detracts from your point, but on many campuses, the ‘campus police’ are ‘real’ police officers, have jurisdiction, can arrest you, etc..
SectarianSofa
@Martin:
Uh, and how would that work for one of these kids, exactly? They were apparently targeted for low family support and other issues. I doubt they’ll either head out West in a covered wagon or get in a witness protection program.
RalfW
@Darkrose:
Yes. And I’m sure effort goes in to recruiting low income and minority students here in the US, but is it really a top mission of a government-supported school to be seeking the best foreign students?
I understand that international students bring diversity and new perspectives. They can often bring exceptional brain power and it might be a Chinese or Indian or Malawi or other int’l student who helps bring a breakthrough in science or art or what have you.
But though I risk sounding like the mustache of understanding, I think we need to invest first and foremost in US students right now. I’m not dug in about that, but to have the quest for int’l students be an excuse for so badly handling the Occupy moment, peh.
jefft452
@slag:
“And I really wonder whether deposing this leader while leaving all the rest of them standing offers much of a solution to this problem”
I kind of think it does
If I do something that might cost somebody his job, well there are plenty of scapegoats and “a few bad apples” to sacrifice, while for me the vast majority of bad apples, I know my boss has my back
But if I do something that might cost my boss’s boss his job, my boss is going to come down on me like a ton of bricks
You need to shoot an Admiral to encourage the others, not an Ensign