Imagine the following scenario: a UC Berkeley administrator doesn’t care for a particular student group -— say, the Cal Students for Liberty — and decides to pursue trumped-up disciplinary charges against the organization’s active members. The university official even goes so far as to submit false evidence against our young libertarians.
After threatening the students’ academic futures for over a year, the university finally affords them a formal hearing, but thankfully an independent adjudicatory panel sees through the charade. Meanwhile, though, the students have suffered real harm: their grades have dropped, they’ve spent countless hours missing work while fighting to save their educational future and their names have been dragged through the mud. Certainly the university’s grievance procedure — which exists to provide relief for students who are the victims of inappropriate applications of university policy — offers some remedy for these exonerated students, right? Wrong.
That was the position announced Sept. 14 by university officials, who issued an initial ruling rejecting parts of a formal grievance filed by graduate student Aakash Desai. Mr. Desai was active in the anti-austerity movement that exploded in Fall 2009, and received disciplinary charges stemming from campus protests.
Despite regulations requiring that formal disciplinary hearings be held within 45 days, university officials waited 14 months to convene a tribunal, offering Mr. Desai no explanation for the unprecedented delay. When he finally received his day in court, Mr. Desai alleges that Jeff Woods, the assistant director for the Center for Student Conduct, engaged in gross misconduct: knowingly withholding exculpatory information, submitting plagiarized police reports into evidence and affirmatively lying to the hearing panel to bolster the university’s case.
In the end, after eight hours of hearings, it took the three-judge panel (chaired with commendable even-handedness by EECS professor Ron Fearing) just 18 minutes of deliberation to clear Mr. Desai on all charges. Mr. Desai filed his grievance shortly after the verdict.
Most troubling about the university’s announcement — aside from the ironic fact that it was authored by Sheila O’Rourke, an administrator in the university’s Division of Equity & Inclusion — is that it presumes Mr. Desai’s factual allegations are entirely true.
The university didn’t find that there was no discrimination based on political belief in Mr. Desai’s case, nor that university officials actually testified truthfully, nor that the grievance was untimely. Rather, the university explained that Mr. Desai simply failed to allege “facts which, if true, would constitute a violation of law or University policy.”
This is something one might expect from a Berkeley official in 1963 but not 2011. It’s a position that should be repugnant to everyone in the university community, regardless of their political affiliation.
For those who have been following Berkeley’s disciplinary proceedings against student activists — which have garnered repeated condemnations by the American Civil Liberties Union — last week’s endorsement of discrimination and harassment will come as little surprise.
Ms. O’Rourke’s ruling is stunning not so much for the novelty of the policy announced but for the bluntness with which it endorses the on-the-ground reality that student activists have encountered for the past two years. The quiet (and long overdue) departure this summer of Susan Trageser, former head of the Student Conduct office, seemed a promising indication that the university was prepared to turn a new leaf. But Ms. O’Rourke’s tortured defense of Jeff Woods comes as a sobering reminder: the university continues to disregard the basic rights of students engaged in political activity on campus.
If university officials expect to be seen as honest brokers and have credibility with their students, they should reverse Ms. O’Rourke’s position on Mr. Desai’s grievance and take action against those responsible for violating students’ basic rights.
Thomas Frampton is a third year student at Berkeley Law and co-founder of the Campus Rights Project at UC Berkeley.
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Californians have rights to University of California Berkeley but NOT when qualified Californians are displaced by Chancellor Birgeneau’s decision to displace Californians for $50,600 and a foreign passsport.
University
of California Berkeley Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau
($500,000 salary), displaces qualified for public university education at Cal.
Californians with $50,600 FOREIGN students.
Ranked # 70 by Forbes, the University of California
Berkeley is not increasing enrollment. $50,600 FOREIGN students are accepted by
Birgeneau at the expense of qualified instate students.
Your opinions make a difference; email UC Board of
Regents [email protected]
Let’s not scapegoat the foreign students, who are after all being used as cash cows. The blame lies with the overpaid administrators whose gravy train is running over both in-state and out-of-state students as well as taxpayers.
I couldn’t agree with you more however that the Chancellor’s $500,000/year salary is a gross abuse of the public trust. Your posting the email address for contacting the Board of Regents is appreciated — I sent them a letter suggesting that UC employee salaries be capped at $100,000 a year, and encourage others to do likewise.
Thank you for making a difference starchild
“suggesting that UC employee salaries be capped at $100,000″
Thank you for your efforts to destroy the University of California. When we are recruiting the next Chancellor, what makes you think a promising candidate would come here rather than taking a job at a comparable school that pays five times more?
If you’re suggesting there’s no one qualified to serve as Chancellor who cares enough about the University of California to do the job as a way of giving back to the community, rather than as a way to get rich, maybe we should just privatize the school and let it be a for-profit system.
I mean, if the people running UC now are only motivated by money, and are willing to charge students and taxpayers “whatever the market will bear” in order to keep earning their generous salaries, then what do we really have to lose?If UC Berkeley is indeed a noble institution worth preserving in its current form, then it shouldn’t be too hard to find a competent person willing to be Chancellor for $99,999 a year. If nobody’s willing to make that sacrifice (setting aside for a moment the question of whether earning nearly six figures a year in a prestige position can properly be called a “sacrifice”), then why should taxpayers make the sacrifice of paying a bunch of money to support this school? There are, as you allude to, plenty of comparable institutions out there which only pick the public’s pockets in the form of federal student grants and loans, rather than the much more expensive direct subsidies that the UC system enjoys.
“do the job as a way of giving back to the community”
UC is not meant to be a public charity. It’s a corporation of the State of California with delegated responsibility for undergraduate and graduate education, scholarly research, public hospitals and clinics, agricultural training, oversight of federal research, and numerous other programs.
It might be possible to find someone willing to take the job without regard for his family, pension, professional advancement, and so on. It would not be possible to find a steady supply of such candidates. It would certainly not be possible to make self-sacrifice a requirement of the position. Idealism is admirable but rarely practical.
Well, if the University of California is a corporation, then it should not receive preferential treatment over other corporations. Let it rise or fall on its own merits without taxpayer subsidies.
But of course UC *is* meant to be a “charity” as surely as it is meant to be a “corporation”, if one boils those two broad terms down to their essence — one is concerned with providing goods and services at market value, the other with providing goods and services at less than market value. UC plays both sides of the fence.
You admit it might be possible to find someone to work as UC Chancellor for $99,999 a year (though you include with that admission the unwarranted assumptions that the Chancellor will be be male, that he will have a family, will be concerned with professional advancement, will need a pension, and so on; in fact a successful applicant might be a retired female executive who is already on a pension, is no longer concerned with “professional advancement”, and does not have a family to support).
So why shouldn’t we try it and find out? That would seem the practical thing to do. In this economy, there might be a steadier supply of candidates than you think.
This is shallow bunk. You clearly understand nothing about university administration. Enjoy your fantasies.
And you are clearly unable to come up with a compelling response to my previous comment, and so instead you respond with insults — the last refuge of those who have run out of substantive things to say!
It seemed pointless to respond to your idiocy. The notion that UC campuses could be run by a succession of “retired female executives” is simply nonsense. The head of the faculty and administration must be a respected scholar deeply involved in academic life. Your failure to understand that was my reason for saying you understand nothing of university administration.
“spent countless hours missing work while fighting to save their educational future”
The point of civil disobedience is to violate an unjust law and incur the penalty, no matter what it may be. Supposing that you can get off scot-free is naive.
Exactly. And why would they expect a corrupt oppressive system to afford them a remedy anyhow? It’s like, ooh, let me tear down the false reality and then complain when I don’t come out even on those same false terms that I’ve rejected. It shouldn’t matter.
So your argument is that no one who thinks the UC administration is corrupt has the right to complain when they are in fact treated unjustly by that system? That sounds like a recipe for singling out critics for abuse and mistreatment.
It is not necessary to *expect* justice, in order to demand it.
You misunderstand civil disobedience. The point of such action is to bring about social or political change. Incurring a legal penalty is totally ancillary, and is in fact usually counter-productive from the point of view of those seeking to violate unjust laws in order to bring about change because it saps their money, time, and/or resources.
But even if the point of civil disobedience were to suffer legal penalties, it would not excuse the university’s failure to uphold due process or protect students from discrimination against them by university officials on account of their political beliefs.
You are the one who misunderstands civil disobedience. Sapping time and money is irrelevant. The protester achieves his goal with moral force. He makes the point that his obligation to behave morally supersedes any disadvantage or harm he incurs in doing it. He demonstrates that the law is truly unjust and must not be allowed to stand. If he sought to evade the penalties, he’d be a hypocrite.
Look, if you believe a law to be unjust, then you can’t logically consider the penalties for breaking it to be just! So if there is any hypocrisy to be found here, it would be in the case of someone who acts as though it is proper to undergo legal penalties which that person acknowledges should not exist.
The moral force of an action is already demonstrated when a protester commits an action that *risks* legal consequences. He or she does not need to actually undergo those consequences in order to prove that the law is unjust or to demonstrate his or her commitment to overturning it.Similarly, a soldier who goes to fight in what he or she believes to be a just war, does not need to be killed in that war in order to prove he/she is fighting for a noble cause. The soldier’s bravery, and commitment to a higher purpose, is already demonstrated when he or she risks his or her life by volunteering to fight.One can argue that those who deliberately make a huge sacrifice for a cause — those who go on suicide missions, hunger strikes, etc. — are more heroic and inspirational. The Arab Spring uprising that is still making waves across the Middle East might not have happened if Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi had not set himself on fire after being stolen from and humiliated by a government inspector, an act that cost him his life.
But such acts are usually born of desperation, not moral calculation. We cannot expect everyone who fights injustice to be a martyr. If they all were, there would soon be no one left to carry on their movements.
And is this not in fact your goal here — to try to raise the price tag of dissent high enough that those who would practice it are either deterred, or find their capacity for resistance neutralized by fines, arrests, imprisonment, and other penalties?
Consider also, when was the last time you heard of a police officer admitting, without being compelled to do so under questioning, “Yes I falsified this police report, or yes I beat this person, or yes I failed to read this suspect his or her rights, because I thought my illegal actions were serving the cause of justice, and now I will voluntarily face the legal penalties”?
Although I’m sure such things *must* happen occasionally, I can’t recall *ever* hearing of such a case. I guess the police, in your world, always uphold the law and have no need to make such admissions — or else large numbers of them are hypocrites. Which is it?
“He or she does not need to actually undergo those consequences in order to prove that the law is unjust”
If an unjust law doesn’t harm anyone, the whole exercise is pointless.
If someone manages to engage in civil disobedience by breaking an unjust law without suffering any penalties, that does not necessarily mean the law is not harming anyone else!
Besides which, having unjust laws on the books is dangerous to society, even in cases where they have not (yet) harmed anyone, because as long as they are there they hold the potential for harm.
“does not necessarily mean the law is not harming anyone else!”
But if no one is seen to be harmed, the example has no force. No one is incensed when a violator is detained and then released without penalty.
Nicely put Mr. Frampton.
As you know all too well, this is hardly an isolated incident of the UC stepping on students, violating UC’s own policies and the law – and shamelessly pretending otherwise.
An absolute lack of integrity pervades the administration.
Q: Among a group of well compensated, highly educated adults, occupiers of powerful positions at an important public institution, what is it that gives rise to such hubristic abuse and deceit?
A: These behaviors are simply the product of syphilitic minds.
Nice rhetoric. Hey, while you’re at it, why don’t you pick up your thesaurus and look up the word “sophomoric?”