Monday saw a massive rally on campus. Some estimated over 5,000 people. By the end, after the crowds thinned out, we had over 1,000 voting at a general assembly. Victims of the police brutality came up and spoke, as did Nathan Brown, who put out the original call for Katehi's resignation. Katehi appeared, looking frail and distraught, and in a wonderful example of logical incoherence announced that she won't resign but she "doesn't want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday.”
After the rally, we re-occupied the Quad. There were at least 70 tents on Monday night. It was cold, but we were in high spirits. There was no police interference and we got through the night unmolested by the dreaded rogue elements and outsiders that Katehi and the administration have warned us about. That night a local artist constructed a large geodesic dome on one side of the encampment. (On Tuesday, students started building a papier-mache brontosaurus. I'm not sure what the political significance is.)
Also on Monday, my department (English) publicly made the following statement about the incident:
The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.
Only one faculty member dissented. I'm really proud to be an English PhD at UC Davis right now.
Other departments, including Physics, Linguistics, and History, have also called for Katehi’s resignation. And everyone seems to be talking about the idea of democratizing the selection of Chancellor.
There has been push back from some quarters. At the Graduate Student Association meeting last night, Civil and Environmental Engineering, which Katehi has close connections to, came out in support of Katehi and told us not to “make categorical statements” or sacrifice “accuracy for immediacy.” (It was then pointed out that, on Friday, Katehi *immediately* sent out a letter supporting the police action.)
Katehi’s PR machine is finally gearing up, too, it seems. Yesterday, the banner for the school website became a giant photo-shopped picture of Katehi with a legend that said something like “I am sorry." It’s since been taken down. And, yesterday, Katehi held a town hall meeting in which she alternately blamed the Vice Chancellor and claimed that arrests were not authorized. The cops were just there to take down tents, apparently. This is strange given the fact that, as soon as police arrived, they stated that people would be arrested if they did not disperse. This was not an on-the-spot decision; they knew what was going to happen in advance. And, again, this was not Katehi’s line immediately following the incident.
We’re voting on what proposals we’re going to make in response to the event at the GSA meeting next week, so we’ll see. All of the other GSA representatives in my department are on board with Katehi’s resignation.
Meanwhile, off campus, there have been calls for a cultural boycott. Peter Hallward and others announced that they refuse to come to campus at guest speakers as long as Katehi is Chancellor. The Alumni Association is also exerting economic pressure to remove the Chancellor.
The effort to make UC Davis a sanctuary campus seems even more complicated. The General Assembly on Monday passed a call for a General Strike for the following Monday, but did not pass the cops off campus proposal. Something like 60% voted “yes” and over 30% voted “thumbs sideways.” The idea of a sanctuary campus is still foreign to most students.
We certainly won’t get cops off campus with Katehi as our chancellor. Despite her recent invocation of the 1973 Greek campus massacres at her alma mater, Athens Polytechnic, Katehi signed onto a report that recommended the abolition of asylum campuses earlier this year: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/11/22/athens-polytechnic-comes-to-uc-davis/
There have also been concerns about what a sanctuary campus looks like and how this might affect women, students of color, and LGBTQ individuals, especially in light of recent hate crimes. Some have suggested that we use some combination of unarmed policing methods (unarmed security officers, escort services, and\or student-led security) to address these concerns. And, of course, from further right, students are constantly being described as “vulnerable,” and that vulnerability has been a great alibi for militarizing the campus.
It's difficult to say what is going to happen next. Katehi refuses to resign and the investigation won't report back for another 30 days. With Thanksgiving, finals, and Winter Break coming up, the occupation of the quad is sure to dwindle.
The original cause of the occupation - the privatization of the UC system - is equally uncertain. Regents meetings are becoming increasingly secretive - now they're meeting only by conference call - and Yudof is pursuing a strategy of delay and obfuscation. We are told tuition fees will not increase unless the state gives us a lot of money. Since that won't happen, we know that at some point the Regents will vote in a fee increase, probably when everyone goes home for the summer. But, in the meantime, the Regents can plausibly deny student protests against fee increases by saying that they aren't voting on them at X or Y meeting and the media passes this on.
Still, UC Davis is becoming more radicalized every day and polices that once seemed utopian are now being discussed in every department on campus. It's an exciting time.
Best,
Jordan