As police use of force during November protests still faces criticism and Occupy Cal continues into its second semester, University of California officials, Occupy Cal protesters and members of the campus community met Tuesday for a town hall meeting to discuss the university’s response to future protests.
The forum, entitled “How would you respond to the next ‘Occupy’?,” was the first in a series sponsored by the UC Office of the President to examine current police policies and allow the community to give input on future practices.
However, the particular unfolding of events on Nov. 9 at UC Berkeley and on Nov. 18 at UC Davis would not be discussed, said Christopher Edley, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.
“This forum is not an attempt to look back at events that have occurred on our campuses,” Edley said. “Instead, we’re trying to look forward for future events.”
The town hall, which was held in Pauley Ballroom, also featured UC General Counsel Charles Robinson, while ASUC President Vishalli Loomba and campus Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab served as facilitators for the event.
At the beginning of the event, entering members of the audience began to move the rows of chairs into a large circle, and soon the administrators decided to leave the stage at the head of the room and join the circle.
“I thought it was really interesting how the forum was physically remade,” said campus performance studies professor Catherine Cole.
As the forum began in the new format, the administration stressed its good intentions.
“What I’ve learned is that all of the administration is seen as a conspiratorial cabal that has different aims – and that’s just not true,” said Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri. “Are there no circumstances in which students are doing something the administration has to step into, like closing down educational buildings during the semester?”
Throughout the forum, concerns over the lack of accountability in the administration and misgivings over the response to future protests continued to crop up.
“Everyone could agree that the melee on Nov. 9 was not supposed to happen, so why does it keep happening?” said ASUC Student Advocate Samar Shah. “I think that the lack of chain-of-command is no longer an excuse and can no longer be tolerated. After Wheeler ’09, we wanted to have a crisis command center — that completely failed on Nov. 9.”
The series of forums are taking place as part of an effort to create a report to be released around March 1 about current police practices and recommendations for changes with input from the UC campus communities.
Over the course of a more-than-four-hour-long joint legislative hearing in Sacramento Dec. 14, state legislators questioned UC President Mark Yudof about how the UC would improve its systemwide police protocol and policies in the aftermath of the protests. Yudof said the report’s recommendations will ensure accountability for the incidents and inevitably lead to a centralization of policies after Robinson and Edley interview a wide variety of people with varying perspectives.
“We’re not going to be able to make everyone happy,” Robinson said. “Perhaps not everything in the report will be how they wanted it, but we at least want to make everyone heard.”
Others were not so optimistic.
“After seeing how little effect the Brazil Report had, I’m not holding out much hope,” Cole said.
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In a civilized society, representatives of the state (as duly elected or appointed by those elected) and institutions such a UC Berkeley devise and promulgate laws. If those laws are broken, those who violate them should be prosecuted and if found guilty, punished. The first step in prosecution is arrest and those who resist arrest and/or continue to violate the laws must understand that they will be subjected to reasonable physical force by those entrusted to enforce the law.
UC Berkeley has promulgated a law that camping after dark is illegal on campus. Occupy has foolishly decided that camping on campus is the best way to achieve the ends of their honorable message that the elite shouldn’t wield so much economic power. Unfortunately, the pipe dream of some sanctimonious Occupy members is that “revolution” is the means to achieve this, rather than via electing those who support their agenda. And the means to the delusion of revolution is breaking the law.
By turning their ideals from diminishing the economic control of the Wall St. elite to the “right” to camp, Occupy demonstrators are getting what they so richly deserve. They are too self-absorbed to see that the vast majority of the public has been throughly alienated by their tactics…
The sfgate article says that multiple people at the event said that the UCPD should not carry weapons, or even be completely disbanded. Why didn’t the Daily Cal report on this? Was this an attempt by the Daily Cal to protect campus leftists by not publicizing their more outlandish rants?
Is the Daily Cal an objective media outlet, or a propaganda piece which censors any news that does not fit it’s ideological agenda??
A large segment of people in attendance agreed that police should not be on campus (which is not unprecedented). I don’t exaggerate when I say this. I think it’s interesting that the Daily Cal avoids this narrative.
The article misses the major themes that emerged in the meeting:
1. Academic values of free and sincere discussion need to be first and foremost as opposed to thinking in terms of rules and order. Students should be treated as people who can engage in calm discussion and think critically, not as hooligans bent on causing trouble.
2. The first call shouldn’t be to the police unless something is actually violent. Instead, it should be to a mediator who can help turn a gathering into a sincere discussion of the underlying issues *with* administration and faculty pariticipation. Having police show up in riot gear provokes a non-productive frame of response on all sides.
3. The protests and demonstrations are largely arising from a perception of administration alienation from students and a lack of transparency and participation in the decision-making process that is impacting students/faculty/staff. If suitable “democratization” could be obtained, a lot of the problems associated with demonstrations might simply vanish from campus.
[Academic values of free and sincere discussion need to be first and foremost as opposed to thinking in terms of rules and order.]
Except that “free and sincere discussion” isn’t possible without rules and order to keep the junior thug activists in line. Groups such as Occupy and BAMN are exactly why there are cops on campus – it’s not like either of those outfits has demonstrated any history of being open-minded or tolerant of people not sharing their own hard-core left-wing views…
So, when a student was seen in a lab with a gun back in November you would have a mediator conduct a sincere discussion about his underlying issues?
The conspiracy lies in the high administrative salaries accomplished via tuition increases and cuts to academic programs.
I’m no defender of the UC administration, but once again, what choice do they have when the money’s not there. I sure hope that you’re not a member of the UC faculty, because based on your silly comments here and elsewhere, you clearly have a childish, simplistic view of the real world…
[“What I’ve learned is that all of the administration is seen as a
conspiratorial cabal that has different aims – and that’s just not
true,” said Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri.]
Yet what have many of these Occupy supporters learned from their humanities and liberal arts professors, who have peddled your own argument that America is some conspiratorial cabal of old white men who plot against them on the basis of race/class/gender/whatever? You same lefties who indoctrinate students with your own impotent rage against society aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed if you can’t figure out where these students developed their own paranoia and resentment…
congratulations to both sides for sitting peacefully together and eye to eye, which contributed a healthy discussion by courteous, articulate and intelligent participants. we know timing is everything, why didn’t they have this forum before releasing the revised student code of behavior which seem down right archaic.