Chancellor Katehi faces the students Monday, Pictures @lhfang/Twitter
David Buscho who was one of students pepper-sprayed on Friday appeared on the Ed Show last night, his interview begins at about the 7:00 mark.
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Buscho calls paid-leave of the Lt. John Pike, the officer who assaulted him and his friends an inadequate response and suggested there needs to be a "very serious psychological analysis" of the officer. He reiterates his call for the Chancellor's resignation.
After, Assistant Nathan Brown makes the case there is a brutal systematic response of cracking down on UC students that protest tuition increases and that police brutality was an easily foreseeable outcome to the decision to task police with dispersing protesters.
Reports out of yesterday's General Assembly address at UC Davis indicate she failed to move the crowd. Katehi's support is collapsing, her tenure is hanging by a thread.
In addition to generating national headlines, the students on UC Davis are showing some clever behind the scenes political lobbying as well. It's become clear a not insignificant number of faculty at UC Davis are sympathetic to the students' grievances.
Pressure continues to build on Chancellor Katehi from inside as well as from outside. A letter was circulated by Graduate students in UC Davis' Anthropology Department to the department faculty. It reads: "We as graduate students are calling on you faculty to become involved in a movement upon which so much depends." Furthermore:
We ask that the anthropology faculty draft a letter demanding her sincere apology for Friday’s events and, more importantly, her immediate resignation.
But Lee Fang tweeted from yesterday's rally: "Student Olivia [upper right picture] emphasizes Katehi is only a face, structural change should be priority."
Before the focus at UC Davis became the breach of First Amendment rights and police brutality, the students' concerns were primarily economic.
The UC system is considering a transition to privatization and enormous tuition hikes. The student protesters have good reason to fear their own future, but their concerns are bigger than their own lot in life.
At stake here, in their own words, is "the right to a public education threatened by massive budget cuts and tuition hikes...that will price out even more students."
This is what they are fighting for, the future of public education, in California, and ultimately the country.
Will education be further privatized? Like healthcare will it be driven wholly by the pursuit of profit? Or will we retain our values that it remain affordable, accessible and a rung on the ladder out of poverty?
In the letter, they relate the events of the last three days as they have experienced them. It seems clear faculty cannot trust Chancellor Katehi, or the police to convey the facts honestly.
The letter after the fold.
Dear Anthropology Faculty,
First, we, the undersigned anthropology graduate students, would like to sincerely thank those of you who endorsed the call to strike last Tuesday. Your support means so much to all of us.
By now you will have heard about the incident of police brutality directed towards UC Davis students on the quad this Friday. What happened on Friday afternoon was a very tragic, but inspiring moment in the movement to save public education here in California. The energy at our university right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Many of us graduate students have found ourselves increasingly involved in the struggle against the privatization of the UC. As such, we were present on Friday as both participants and observers. What follows is our eyewitness account of the event and the days leading up to it.
This Tuesday over 2,000 UC Davis students, faculty, and staff participated in a rally on the quad against the privatization of the UC and police brutality at UC Berkeley. The rally culminated with a march and occupation of Mrak Hall. Nearly 100 students held Mrak Hall through the night in opposition to further tuition increases that will price out even more students.
On Wednesday while police officers in riot gear evicted students from Mrak Hall, over 100 UC Davis students participated in a rally and march to ReFund California in San Francisco. During the march, twelve UC Davis students were arrested in a successful occupation of the Bank of America. These students were protesting the conflict of interest represented by UC Regent Monica Lozano’s position as a board member of the Bank of America, an institution which profits from foreclosed homes and increasing college tuition in the form of student loan debt.
Thursday, students, a number of whom we have taught, including some anthropology majors, began an occupation of the UC Davis quad in solidarity with occupiers at UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. While students successfully held the quad overnight, an order was given for students to disperse on Friday by 3pm.
This Friday many of us were present as sixty police officers in full riot gear stormed the quad. Students responded by non-violently linking arms and surrounding their encampment. Riot police attacked non-violent students by pepper-spraying them directly in the face. In total they arrested ten people. One student was jerked up by his arm so hard, that he now has a pinched radial nerve. Doctors say he will not fully recover for two weeks. Another student was hospitalized for chemical burns from the pepper spray, and others were left vomiting, temporarily blinded, or teary eyed due to the spray’s effects.
While the riot police attempted to storm the encampment, the students managed to successfully oust them from the quad. In a general assembly that followed the departure of the riot police, we decided to reconvene the encampment on Monday at noon beginning with a general assembly. We expect this to be quite a large gathering.
We as graduate students are calling on you faculty to become involved in a movement upon which so much depends. We graduate students have spent much of our time and energy attempting to launch a movement that seems to have finally arrived at UC Davis.
We are therefore asking the anthropology faculty in both wings to join UCD English professor Nathan Brown, whose open letter is copied below, the UC Davis Faculty Association, and over 42,000 Americans [now closing in on 80,000] who have signed the below petition in calling for the immediate resignation of Chancellor Katehi. Her direct responsibility for the police attacks on our students, and her efforts to silence free speech and expression, especially when they relate to the right to a public education threatened by massive budget cuts and tuition hikes, is a shame on our university. We ask that the anthropology faculty draft a letter demanding her sincere apology for Friday’s events and, more importantly, her immediate resignation.
You may find the nation-wide petition here:
http://www.change.org/...
read more about Friday’s events here:
http://www.sacbee.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
and view ASUCD and other mainstream news footage here:
http://www.aggietv.org/
http://www.fox40.com/...
Sincerely,
Kevin Smith
Adam Liebman
Caroline McKusick
Tanzeen Doha
Nicole Naar
Jason L. Edmonds
Julie Linden
Doris Duangboudda
Nina Kessler
Whitney Larratt-Smith
Jane Saffitz
Lena Meari
Francis J. Jervis
Matthew Nesvet
Carmen Cortez
Yi Zhou
Jorge Nunez Vega
William DiFede
Camilo Sanz
Christian Doll
Shaheen Amirebrahimi
Houston Martin
Asma M. Mohseni
Maya Costa-Pinto
Jeremy Till
Bascom Guffin
Leah Wiste
Vivian Choi
Gregory Burns
Peter Stamos
Andrew Tremayne
Alexandra Greenwald
Rima Praspaliauskiene
Steve Schwortz
Carly Whelan
Chris Kortright
Vandana Nagaraj
Stefanie Graeter
John Lambert
Laura Meek
Meghan Donnelly
Kristina Lyons
Madeline Campbell
Ryan Schacht
They attached a link to
UC Davis Assistant Professor Nathan Brown's original call for Chancellor Katehi's resignation.
Good for them. That's how it's done, department by department, student by student, person to person.