UCPD Erects Second Fence

Editor's note: This article is part of the Daily Cal's Semester in Review series for the month of November.

Early Thursday morning, the campus erected a second fence in front of the oak grove near Memorial Stadium in the first step toward removing the protesters from the trees.

UC police arrived at about 8 a.m. to set up a barricade around a construction crew as they began assembling the fence. The crew jack-hammered posts into the ground at the grove’s edge about one foot from the sidewalk.

The installation of the fence comes in anticipation of the ruling on the lawsuits seeking to block the proposed athletic center on the site.

The timing is unrelated to the final home football game of the 2007 season on Saturday, said Dan Mogulof, campus executive director of public affairs.

In a Nov. 7 letter to Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller, university attorney Charles Olson said the fence was the first step in the process of removing the tree-sitters “without unnecessary risk” to protesters or security personnel.

Campus officials said Miller’s ruling could come as early as Wednesday.

The new fence extends from the area east of the International House to the grove’s northern edge, and expands the radius of the barrier blocking off the grove by an average of 25 feet.

The crew was still working on the fence at 7 last night and is expected to continue work today.

Officials said the new fence is intended to control movement in and out of the grove.

However, tree-sitters could be seen yesterday entering the area by climbing a telephone pole on city property. They were then able to climb through the trees and reach the large platforms erected in December and first surrounded by a fence in August.

Gaps were left in the fence to facilitate traffic flow at Saturday’s football game, Mogulof said. The campus will later reconsider keeping the gaps.

Officials will continue to permit the delivery of supplies to protesters, Mogulof said. But the policy might change after the lawsuits’ ruling, regardless of the case’s outcome.

“If people in the trees continue to defy state law, local ordinances, campus regulations and court orders, we need to have the pieces in place to secure the area and enforce the law,” Mogulof said.

More will be done to secure the area before Wednesday, but not before the game, Mogulof said, without elaborating on what measures would be taken.

One option under consideration is the placement of barbed wire on the top of the fence. The mounts for barbed wire could be seen on top of the poles of the fence yesterday, but it was not actually installed at the time.

“We are still going to give (the protesters) every opportunity to come down voluntarily,” Mogulof said.

When the campus put up the first fence, plaintiffs felt it violated the injunction placed on construction by Miller. On Aug. 30 she ruled it did not.

Doug Buckwald, director of Save the Oaks at the Stadium, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, said he felt the latest fence did not violate the injunction, even if its placement was convenient.

“It looks to me like (the new fence) is at the perimeter they would want for a construction project,” he said. “So they may not be entirely transparent for their reasons for erecting the fence at this point.”

The day ended in a rally in support of the tree-sitters, involving about 30 people, mostly non-students. Despite threats of violence, the rally was calm.

Zachary RunningWolf, one of the protest’s leaders, said the tree-sitters must prepare for more intimidation by the campus.

“Some of our warriors are going to have to go to jail,” he told the crowd.

Many protesters also pointed to UC Santa Cruz, where protesters and tree-sitters objecting to planned development were confronted by police Wednesday. Many were hit with pepper spray by police and six protesters were arrested.

Campus officials said they want to avoid confrontation.

“Any decision we make will have an overriding desire to prevent injury to protesters and police,” Mogulof said.

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