Protest the UC Regents Meeting at UC Riverside, 1/19

Fliers made by unaffiliated students:

Behind Closed Doors, UC Regents Again Vote to Raise Admin Salaries

From the Bay Citizen:

Regents of the University of California, meeting for the first time since campus police used pepper spray and riot batons to disperse student protests at Berkeley and Davis, listened to nearly three hours of public complaints about those incidents and tuition increases before chanting protesters disrupted the meeting and drove them from the room.

The Regents then reconvened in a smaller room down the hall from the protesters, where they voted to raise the salaries of nearly a dozen university administrators and lawyers by as much as 21.9 percent.

[...]

The regents also approved salary raises for 10 administrators and managers, including a 9.9 percent increase for Meredith Michaels, vice chancellor of planning and budget at UC Irvine, whose annual salary will increase to $247,275 from $225,000.

Six campus attorneys also received salary increases. The largest increase, 21.9 percent, went to Steven A. Drown, chief campus counsel and associate general counsel at UC Davis. His yearly salary will rise to $250,000 from $205,045.

(pic via Daily Cal)

Birgeneau Gets Served

And not just Birgeneau. A class action lawsuit has been filed in federal court against a number of UC Berkeley officials by members of the Wheeler 66, who were arrested without warning in the middle of the night during the Live Week occupation in December 2009. The Daily Cal reports:

Six individuals, including former and current UC Berkeley students, have filed a federal class action lawsuit alleging that four campus officials violated their constitutional rights by punitively arresting and jailing 66 people participating in a December 2009 demonstration.

According to the complaint — filed Oct. 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California — the plaintiffs seek damages for violations they alleged to have occurred during the “Open University” demonstration in Wheeler Hall, which occurred from Dec. 7 to Dec. 11, 2009.

The four campus officials — Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Harry Le Grande, UCPD Chief Mitch Celaya and UCPD Lt. Marc DeCoulode — were served with the complaint Monday afternoon, said Kevin Brunner, an attorney with Siegel and Yee, the law firm representing the individuals filing the lawsuit.

The complaint seeks to stop the officials from continuing what it alleges is a policy of sending nonviolent detainees taken into custody during campus protests to the Alameda County Jail rather than citing and releasing them.

“The policy of jailing non-violent protestors is punitive and a violation of the protestors’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly,” the complaint states.

According to campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore, the lawsuit is still being reviewed by campus counsel.

“We can’t comment on the details of the lawsuit at this time because it is still being reviewed by counsel,” she said. “Nevertheless, we are confident that the university’s actions were legally justified.”

Senior Administrators Now Officially Outnumber Faculty at the UC

It's official -- the administration continues to grow as faculty and workers continue to shrink. In this context, it's worth noting once again that administrators are the only ones getting substantial raises these days (the Daily Cal has the enemies list). We have to remember that austerity doesn't only mean cutbacks and layoffs -- it also corresponds to hirings and bonuses.

Here's the full report from Keep California's Promise:

In November of 2009, KeepCaliforniasPromise.org posted a report by Richard Evans titled “Soon every faculty member will have a personal senior manager” which pointed out that the number of managers at UC was growing far faster than the ranks of the faculty and that, if the trend continued, it would not be long before there were more senior managers than ladder rank faculty. Richard just sent me an e-mail pointing out that data through April of 2011 was out.

I wondered if the data would show how the “Working Smarter Initiative” and much talked about cuts of $80 million to the UC Office of the President, had combined with promises to first and foremost “preserve excellence in instruction, research and public service… which it cannot do without continuing to attract and retain top-flight faculty” (see, http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/25580) to reverse that trend.

Well, it turns out faculty ranks have declined by 2.3 percent since the 2009 post, at a time when student enrollment increased by 3.6 percent. (I would hope the UC administration wouldn’t try to spin a continuing erosion of a major measure of academic quality such as the student faculty ratio as increased efficiency.)

But we all know the budget cuts have been tough. Even an administration striving to preserve the education and research missions of the University by directing as many of the cuts as possible at administrative overhead might have to make painful cuts to the employees responsible for education and research in such an environment. The cuts to senior administrators must be even steeper, right? At least as steep?

Somehow the ranks of managers have continued to grow right through this difficult period – up 4.2% between April, 2009 and April, 2011. In fact, the dismal prediction of our 2009 post has now come to pass: UC now has more senior managers (8,822 FTE) than ladder rank faculty (8,669 FTE).

Closing Statements in the Irvine 11 Trial

From UC Rebel Radio:

Santa Ana, California - Today court resumed with closing statements in the Irvine 11 10 case. After the jury walked in, the judge took over 45 minutes to instruct the jury as to the procedure of trial and the law including a statement that pertained to "bias", declaring that it shouldn't influence the jury's judgement. The judge also read some of the statements made by the accused during the event in which they protested Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren's Speech, but curiously the only statements read by the judge where those which called Oren a "murderer" or implied that he was akin to one.

Thereafter, the Prosecution took the stage and proceeded with their sports metaphors as usual (read previous post), arguing that the Irvine 11 had conspired to commit a "heckler's veto" of the Ambassador's Speech in order to "shut down" the event, a word that was used in a fancy overhead display in bold red letters to persuade the jury. The Prosecution then continued to lay out the case as they saw it, declaring that the Irvine 11 were guilty of violating "the rules that apply to society" since they did not heed the admonishment from Prof. Petracca of UC Irvine as he was heard to say the words "Behave yourself" in a video shown from the event. The Prosecution argued that Petracca's words (as well as Chancellor's Michael Drake's brief commentary) were in fact the "implicit customs" and "rules" of the meeting which were supposedly violated by the defendants. The Prosecution stated that the protest was "not freedom" but an example of "Anarchy". The prosecution added, "when you don't follow the law, our community breaks down" and "permitting censorship of ideeers [sic] destroys the marketplace". The Prosecution discussed that the accused could have effected their protest during a Q&A section at the end of Oren's Speech, but that the accused chose to violate the law instead.

Among other statements by the Prosecution, they argued that what happened to President Obama when someone yelled out "You lie" during an address to Congress was a very different case since what happened in Congress was "only two words" by an "individual". Other "evidence" presented by the Prosecution included several pie charts that depicted in black and red the "time" that they believed the protest lasted (as opposed to the time that Oren spoke) in order to show that the accused "substantially" disrupted the meeting. Also, a debriefing video of an unidentified person saying "we pretty much shut them down" was shown as evidence of the "intent" of the protest. Lastly, the Prosecution argued that the accused did "not resist" arrest, because it was part of their "plan" or "conspiracy".

After the Prosecution delivered their closing statement the court went to recess. During this intermission there was a Press Conference outside the courthouse with local leaders from the community in support of the Irvine 11, (See video of press conference, coming soon).

In the afternoon, the court resumed with the closing statements from Defense attorney Dan Mayfield. In his statement, Mayfield expressed that the Prosecution was leading the jury to believe that "when people are arrested they are guilty".Mayfield also argued that the pie charts presented by the Prosecution were inaccurate given that they counted the time "attributable to protesters" in which the crowd was shouting as well as when UC-Irvine Professor, Petracca chose to "hear his own voice" by expressing his "personal embarrassment" to the crowd. Upon this last reference there was the first incidence of clapping in the courtroom. Then laughter came as Mayfield introduced one of the accused as the "world's biggest teddy bears" during the part of his presentation dedicated to show that the protesters indeed had planned to "not resist" the police. Mayfield explained that the accused were very carefully planning to "abide" by the law, a word that was later emphasized by the other defense attorney in closing statements, Reem Salahi. Mayfield argued that if the planning that took place by the Irvine 11 was enough to convict them of "conspiracy" then the planning of the UCPD was also a "conspiracy" as Mayfield recalled a witness testimony from Police Chief, Hennesy stating the fact that there were "metal handcuffs" at the scene prior to the protest. Mayfield added that "Oren himself believed that he was not substantially interfered with" as he recalled Oren's statement "wishing those students" had "remained" in the room (See our previous post on the Irvine 11). Lastly, Mayfield argued that the "rules" or "customs" of the meeting were uncorroborated arguments since neither Petracca nor Drake ever took the stand to verify the meaning of their statements in court. Then Mayfield went on to have a mock witness examination of Drake and Petracca to demonstrate why it was important for them to testify to the accuracy of their statements by asking an empty chair if he [an imaginary Drake] had "other bosses" and whether they interpreted the "rules" and "customs" in the same fashion, as well as an imaginary Petracca, asking him whether he "had something to drink that evening". More laughter filled the packed courtroom (which had to employ over 5 bailiffs by the end of the day). Mayfield closed with a famous e.e. cummings poem to emphasize the importance of language.

Thereafter, Defense attorney Reem Salahi took the podium to address the jury. In her closing statement, Salahi emphasized Mayfield's argument that the UCPD's "plan" to counter the protest was planned in the same fashion as the accused "plan" for the protest. Salahi added that the statements given by UCPD Chief Hennesy were contradictory to evidence since he stated having no "prior knowledge" of a protest, when in UC-Irvine's Dean of Students, Edgar Dormitorio's statement, he mentions having found out about the plan for the protest from the Chief of Police himself. Salahi also mentioned that the Prosecution was relying on other testimony from an unknown subject since the person in the video presentation from the prosecution saying the words "we pretty much shut them down" (in reference to the meeting) could never be identified or ever brought to the courtroom. Salahi also stated that in Dormitorio's own words "no disruption would be allowed", thus violating the right to protest. Salahi then showed a series of videos which portrayed several protests taking place at the UC Irvine campus which were disrupted in the same fashion and in which "police" and "administration" "were present" and no arrest took place, thus emphasizing the disproportionate attention that this case has garnered. To close, Salahi was going to tell a personal anecdote, but the Prosecution objected as to its relevance and the judge sustained the motion. Salahi looked perplexed at first, but then she said, "I guess I can't tell you the story. I got shut down" and the crowd in the courtroom erupted in clapping and cheering.

After she sat, the judge declared a brief recess. When he returned (10 minutes late from the time he set), he admonished the crowd while the jury was still out, saying he would not permit anymore "gesturing". Then he let in the jury and told the crowd to leave and that the case would continue tomorrow morning...

For more information, check out Nora Barrows-Friedman's coverage at the Electronic Intifada.

No Agreement on Multiyear Tuition Hike...

... but that obviously doesn't mean it's not going to happen anyway. The regents didn't want to be forced to discuss, or even voice support for, the proposal to lock the UC into raising fees by 81 percent over the next four years. But it's not because all of a sudden they had a change of heart.

It's because they're terrified. Of us.

The Chronicle today does a great job of revealing what the UC regents really think about public education -- that it should die:

Yudof and his finance team had hoped the regents would discuss their multiyear budget and tuition proposal, then vote in November.

But even though the regents liked the idea of imposing some stability on their wildly fluctuating budget, they stayed away from the hot-button issue of yearly tuition increases.

"It scares the bejesus out of folks," was how Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a regent, summed it up.

The four-year budget plan was intended to tackle a looming gap of $1.5 billion over the next four years, about a third of which UC says is needed for higher pay, and a quarter for retiree health and pension benefits. This year's tuition increase and cutbacks have resolved an additional $1 billion shortfall, officials said.

The idea was that a steady flow of tuition hikes would help pay these costs. Tuition would rise more in years when the state gave less, and vice versa. In the worst-case scenario - if the state provided no increase - basic tuition would rise by 16 percent a year, reaching $22,200 by fall 2015, not including mandatory campus fees, room and board. That's 81 percent higher than the current $12,192.

[...]

Negotiating with Sacramento is "a waste of our time," said Regent Dick Blum.

Instead, the regents should approach people "who actually can write a check," he said. "Chevron, Apple, Cisco and Google - all these companies sitting on money they don't know what to do with."

Regent David Crane picked up on the theme, urging colleagues to "start acting like you're a private university. Get real - and don't fool yourselves and think the Legislature will turn around, or you'll be waiting for Godot," he said, referring to the Samuel Beckett play in which the protagonists wait in vain.

Some regents said corporate money could be used for scholarships. Others said an ad campaign for UC would be better.

Chairwoman Sherry Lansing suggested they form subcommittees to tackle each approach. The bottom line, she said, is, "I don't want to bring this (proposal) forward in November."

[...]

The regents, who have been approving tuition hikes for years, sometimes twice in the same year, actually appear quite comfortable with multiyear fee increases. Since 2006, when tuition was $6,141, the regents have raised it each year by 8, 7, 26, 15 and 18 percent.

Meanwhile, the regents gave raises and incentive pay to some of UC's highest-paid executives, including Chief Investment Officer Marie Berggren, who got a $744,950 award for boosting UC's assets by $661 million beyond what was expected.

Senior Vice President John Stobo, in charge of UC's health system, received a $130,500 award for, among other things, reducing blood infections.

When Stobo's raise was announced and he was praised for his achievements, a health care worker - a member of a union that has been without a contract for months - jumped up from the audience and yelled, "It's sad that you give yourself all these raises. The decrease in infections is because of our work, but you guys get credit for it. Shame on you!"

Guards led her away.

Anarchist General Assembly Tomorrow

Let’s create a new kind of ANARCHIST GENERAL ASSEMBLY!

Saturday July 16th
12 – 5pm, BBQ to follow
6501 Telegraph Ave. (Near Ashby BART)
Oakland, CA

~~~

The first in an experimental series of regional anarchist general assemblies will be held in Oakland on July 16th, 2011.

The purpose of this assembly is to strengthen ties within the Bay Area's anarchist community by providing a regularly occurring event to share projects we’re working on, discuss the topics we are organizing around, promote collaboration and solidarity between different groups, spark new initiatives and build our collective capacity as a social antagonist force. The assembly will not be a decision-making body; it will not create platforms or manifestos.

More detailed information about the various sessions and breakout groups is available in the official announcement at Indybay. It's also worth listening to the following interview that aired on a recent broadcast of the show Relatos Zapatistas. You can listen to it here:

UC Regents Meeting, July 12-14: Class War Edition

Today the UC regents officially voted to once again raise student tuition while at the same time increasing compensation for high level execs:

SAN FRANCISCO -- University of California Regents voted Thursday to raise tuition by 9.6 percent -- on top of an 8 percent increase already approved for this fall -- over the objections of students who said they'll drown in debt.

At the same meeting, the regents also gave large pay raises to three executives, including two who are paid from state funds.

This fall, undergraduate tuition will rise to $12,192, more than 18 percent higher than last year's $10,302 -- a level that prompted violent student protests. With a mandatory campus fee of $1,026, a year at UC now costs $13,218 before room and board.

That's more than twice what it cost in 2005.

If austerity is class war, as our compañeros at Bay of Rage like to say, then these repeated tuition hikes should be considered a weapon in the administrative arsenal. Notably, the regents themselves relied heavily on war rhetoric today in discussing student tuition. Sherry Lansing, the regents' recently inaugurated chairperson who stumbled through the motions of her new role today, called for students to join with "staff and chancellors and all of us" to "continue this battle." For his part, Richard Blum, husband of U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein, huge investor in for-profit education, and perhaps the single most corrupt of all the regents, outlined what he saw as the first step of this battle as follows: "we should determine who our friends are and who are our enemies."

We too see what's happening at the universities -- and in every other sector of this country -- as a form of war. But we draw different lines around our friends and our enemies. For regents like Blum and Lansing, the enemies are students, workers, and faculty. Each of these groups constitutes a target to be attacked via specialized instruments of war: tuition hikes for students, layoffs and wage cuts for workers and (to a lesser extent) faculty. That is why we are the crisis and the job of the university's corporate management is precisely that -- to manage the crisis, to manage us.

(image from the daily cal, quotes via dettman)

Footing the Bill [Updated]

A few months ago, we wrote about a number of construction projects that are on the horizon at the UC and specifically about the way these projects are funded. As usual, the UC sells its highly rated construction bonds to raise the capital to carry them out. And ever since Professor Bob Meister published his now-infamous essay "They Pledged Your Tuition," we've known that student tuition, along with the promise of future tuition increases, are critical to the university's ability to maintain its high bond rating. As he wrote in the fall of 2009, "since 2004, UC’s highest priorities have been set by bond raters, and not by the State of California."

To be fair, sometimes there are other sources of revenue, but these cases are the exceptions. One of the examples we cited in the earlier post was the development project in Lower Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley. The reason it came up at the time was that, even before the project had gotten underway, it had already gone $10 million over budget. Funding for that project comes, as the Daily Cal reported, from "contributions from the campus, the UC Office of the President and student fees approved . . . in the 2010 ASUC General Election." As we wrote at the time:

In other words, not only are students paying directly for the project -- after all, we voted for it! Democracy in action! -- we're paying for it indirectly as well, through tuition increases that have already taken place (that money goes into the general fund) and the promise of future tuition increases that the UC now owes the bond raters.

Today, the Daily Cal reports that this same construction project, which will take many years to complete, is already showing a negative cash flow. The article draws on a presentation given by an outside consulting firm, Brailsford & Dunlavey, which is based in Washington, DC. (It's not entirely clear how much the firm is charging for its services, but it's possible that we might be seeing a repeat of the scandalous Bain & Company contract worth $7.5 million.)

The consulting firm's presentation is noteworthy, though not in the sense that Messrs. Brailsford & Dunlavey were hoping for. For example,

A deficit as high as $800,000 may occur between 2019 and 2022, after an expected bump in revenue due to increased student fees in 2018, according to the presentation.

Either the consultants are privy to information about future tuition increases that the rest of us aren't or they're just making shit up (in which case why is UC Berkeley hiring them?). It's important to remember that privatization is not a response to immediate crisis but a long-term strategy. Tuition hikes, it appears, are plotted out years in advance. While they are adjusted to take immediate political concerns into account (like state budgets, for example), these adjustments are little more than slight deviations here and there from the original projections. [Update 7/12 10am: Our mistake. The comment below is correct on this point, that the fees in question are not actually tuition but rather the student fees approved in the vote. However, this doesn't change the fact that the construction project is still financed through multiple sources, including the sale of construction bonds backed by student tuition as collateral. In any case, you can find the schedule for increased student fees for the project here. Further update 7/14 12:39pm: For a full discussion of what the vote actually approved, and why the earlier comment isn't exactly right, check out the comment from Zach Williams below.]

But most important are the comments from Assistant Vice Chancellor for Physical and Environmental Planning Capital Projects Emily Marthinsen:

“If the students are footing the bill for things that are not only the students’ responsibility, then those things have to be very defensible,” Marthinsen said.

If the students are footing the bill... From her isolated office in the A&E Building, Marthinsen can't understand the full implications of her words. Because what Meister shows us is that as students we foot all the bills: "Because UC pledges 100% of tuition to maintain its bond rating, it has also implicitly assured bond financiers that it will raise your tuition so that it can borrow more. Since 2004, UC has based its financial planning on the growing confidence of bond markets that your tuition will increase." Defensibility, furthermore, performs an interesting function here. What administrators find defensible is obviously not defensible for the rest of us -- students, workers, faculty, those of us who use the university. But beyond that, the logic of defensibility is the logic of the liberal technocrat, the enlightened bureaucrat who cannot be held accountable for decisions and as such offers little more than explanations and well-formulated "defenses" -- at best -- that lock the rest of us into decades of debt.

From our perspective, however, the administration's drive toward privatization is simply not defensible. There is little use in appealing to their hearts or letter-writing campaigns or attending glossy presentations by highly-paid consultants. These are the administration's bureaucratic fortresses, sites designed specifically to be highly defensible. And paradoxically, our participation only makes them stronger.

Brown's Austerity Budget and the UC [Updated]

[Updated Wednesday 6/29 10:03am]: The LA Times headline says it all: "Democrats Pass Austerity Budget for California": "The Legislature passed an austerity budget Tuesday night that would cut from universities, courts and the poor, shutter 70 parks and threaten schools but would not -- by officials' own admission -- restore California's long-term financial health." As for public higher ed, the Chronicle reports that tuition hikes at the UC and CSU are a "certainty." Also check out the graphic above: "Trigger Cuts, Chopping Blocks."

* * *

Two weeks ago, we wrote about the austerity budget that was coming through the California state government. It all turned on Governor Brown's call for a special election in mid-September in which voters would decide whether to approve five-year tax extensions as an additional source of revenue to ride out the financial crisis. Today that proposal has been scrapped:

Gov. Jerry Brown relinquished a cornerstone of his budget plan Monday by forfeiting a 2011 tax election and securing a deal with Democratic lawmakers that shortens the school year if tax revenues fall short of optimistic projections.

After months of seeking GOP votes, Brown decided four days before the new fiscal year that a bipartisan deal was impossible. The Democratic governor wanted Republicans to pass a temporary extension of higher sales and vehicle taxes as a "bridge" to a fall election, but Senate Republicans would not vote for taxes.

"I thought we were getting close, but as I look back on it, there is an almost religious reluctance to ever deal with the state budget in a way that requires new revenues," Brown said, sitting at the end of a wooden bench in his office with Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez.

In that earlier budget plan, Democrats in the California legislature proposed an additional $150 million in cuts to both the UC and CSU systems (that is, $300 million total), on top of the $500 million (again to each) that's already been cut. Brown vetoed that budget, but it's now clear that it wasn't out of a desire to protect public education:

Under the new plan, the University of California and California State University will each absorb additional $150 million reductions, for a total of $650 million apiece. They risk losing another $100 million each if the state falls short of revenues. The university systems already have said they will seek tuition hikes to offset new state reductions.

And it's likely to get even worse:

Based on additional revenues that have come to the state so far this year, the budget assumes a very optimistic revenue scenario for the rest of the year. But if the revenue estimates prove unrealistic then there are triggers for additional cuts. These include an additional $100 Million in cuts for both UC and CSU, the possibility of further cuts to K-12 and a further shortening of the school year [by seven days].

Yesterday, the Daily Bruin published an interview with outgoing chair of the UC regents Russell Gould, in which some pretty decent questions are posed (though there's not a whole lot of follow-up). One of the issues that came up was the recent budget passed by the Democratic legislature (on which today's deal is based). Why, the paper quite reasonably asked, should we believe in the UC administration's commitment to fighting for public education, let alone their strategy for winning that fight, especially when even the Democrats have apparently sold us out? Gould's pathetic answer:

Regrettably I think that Sacramento is listening to lots of voices. We’re among them, and I think we’ve got a stronger effort than we’ve ever had to push legislature and governor to push UC, but we’re fighting a lot of other interest groups that say, ‘We’re more important.’

Yet when I talk to legislators and talk to people in the governor’s office, they seem to understand the link toward building businesses, building opportunity and having (a) kind of society and economy that’s sustainable. But when it comes to the short-term decision they seem to put their resources in other places. And that’s what we’re continuing to fight.

And, right on time, UC president Mark Yudof comes out with a statement on his Facebook page outlining how the UC administration would "continue to fight," as Gould put it: by "fully supporting" Brown's attempt to balance the budget.

I fully support Gov. Brown's plan to bring the state budget into balance. This includes his call for an extension of certain temporary taxes that he believes is needed to act as a bridge until the plan can be placed before California voters.

In my view, what the governor has proposed offers the surest pathway available to a more stable fiscal future for all of California, including its public universities. Reliable state support is crucial to the continued excellence of the University of California and the students and families it serves.

Good to know you have our back, Mark.

Update on the Irvine 11: Gag Orders and Free Speech

Via UC Rebel Radio, we wanted to update folks on the prosecution of the Irvine 11. As you know, these students from UC Irvine and UC Riverside are currently facing criminal charges -- not just the bullshit charges associated with the arbitrary student conduct process -- for participating in a protest during a speech given by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. They are accused of conspiring to interrupt and then interrupting Oren's speech, charges which could carry a sentence of up to six months in jail if they are convicted. The trial is scheduled to begin on August 15.



This kind of protest happens all the time, and to political figures who are far more significant than Ambassador Oren. For something like this to lead to a criminal prosecution -- let alone the convening of a grand jury! -- is stunning.

In any case, the recent update is that the judge has issued a gag order in order to prevent "potential jurors [from having] preconceived ideas about the case." The gag order applies to both prosecution and defense, but oddly is not retroactive:

Attorneys for the defendants objected to a protective order against them, with one attorney saying their clients "are not similarly situated" with the district attorney's office and therefore should not be subjected to the same limitations.

Attorneys for the 11 also requested that the court mandate the D.A.'s office remove other information relating to the case from its website, including removal of press releases and emails among the defendants that could be submitted to the court later as evidence. The judge denied the request, saying that there is no need to "go back and sanitize" what has already been released.

Obviously, it's impossible to go back and erase what people have already heard. But there is nevertheless something strange about the disproportionate effects of the gag order -- it silences the present while entirely overlooking the past. There's also something interesting here about the way that "free speech" operates. In a case where college students are facing half a year of jail time for allegedly violating the right to free speech of an Israeli politician, the logic of "free speech" demands that (some) speech be silenced, and (other) speech effectively reinforced. It redistributes speech, spatially and temporally. This is where technologies like "free speech zones" and "time, place, and manner restrictions" come into play.

It's also interesting how the politics of free speech often turns on or the legitimation of racism, with regard to both speech and practice. The LA Times article cited above takes a weird turn toward the end:

The defendants also have critics, including prominent Jewish leaders who say they support free speech but believe the students' behavior crossed a line.

Among those who were in the Santa Ana courtroom Friday was Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project. Gilchrist, whose organization places civilian patrols on the U.S. border, said he was interested in the case because it related to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

"We need to set ground rules," Gilchrist said, adding that he was "victimized" by people interrupting speeches he's given across the country.

"Louis Farrakhan could speak [to me]," Gilchrist said. "You don't stop people from speaking. I want to talk to the accused and see their point of view."

There's so much going on here. Even if we totally leave aside the claims of white victimization and the odd tokenization of Louis Farrakhan, what's interesting is how the politics of free speech renders some utterances speech and others non-speech. Apparently, Gilchrist recognizes that the protesters have a "point of view," a political argument they want to express. In reality, Oren's speech wasn't prevented, blocked, or suppressed (in other words, the protest was less "effective," in absolute material terms, than the gag order) -- rather, it was delayed, or temporally displaced. And, insofar as all speech is contextual and situated, the protesters' can only make that particular argument in the way they did. It is a fundamentally different speech act to denounce the Israeli occupation while the Israeli ambassador is speaking than it is to denounce it outside the building, or the following day.



Now compare the argument Gilchrist lays out above with this interview he did on Democracy Now. The interview -- well, partial interview -- took place following a speech he tried to give at Columbia University that was interrupted when a group of students rushed the stage and unfurled a banner denouncing anti-immigrant racism. This, it seems, is the sort of thing he calls victimization. (Notably, at one point in the video a minuteman kicks one of the students in the head.) Anyway, what happens in the interview is a sort of back and forth between Gilchrist and student organizer Karina Garcia, except it ends abruptly when Gilchrist bails after Garcia begins to confront him. He just gets up, pulls out his earpiece, and walks off camera.

In this case, of course, Gilchrist doesn't want to talk with the other side and "see their point of view." The point here is obviously not that the head of the Minutemen is an asshole -- it sort of goes without saying -- but rather that the tension in his militant desire to simultaneously hear and silence speech precisely mirrors the logic of free speech more broadly.

One final image: this is what pops up on the screen after Gilchrist cuts the camera in his studio (which is located, notably, in Irvine, CA). Somehow, it's extremely appropriate.

[this post has been edited for clarity]

Whose University? On Yudof and "Us"

On May 17, UC President Mark Yudof delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute (ALI) in San Francisco (via). His talk, titled "Whose University? The Decline of the Commonwealth and Its Meaning for Higher Education," is available both in text form as well as in the video above. Those of us willing to subject ourselves to the torture of watching the full speech in the video, however, will discover that what Yudof actually said diverged in some fairly significant ways from the original script. What we want to do here is think through and analyze Yudof's invocation and mobilization of this highly specific language of protest, on which, as the title of the talk suggests, his entire argument turns.

Consider the following passage, which sets up the rest of the talk. We've edited the passage based on the video, striking out the words that were not said and adding in italics those that were inserted. It begins at about 11:05 in the video:

Now, during the many demonstrations against fee increases, students and their allies have consistently taken up the chant: "Whose university? Our University!" In my day, and admittedly when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the battle cry was "make love, not war," a call to arms which I personally find more alluring. [Laughter]

But I do get the point the current students are trying to make -- that is, that they have a stake in the administration's decisions administration, they have a stake in the university, they have a stake in the decisions the legislature, the board of regents, and others make.

Still, the more I ruminate over the question "Whose university," the more I realize that this chant actually frames a more profound societal question, one with implications far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general.

It's a question for American society as a whole -- how to distinguish between the "public good" versus the "private good," and how to strike a balance between the two. A balance that navigates at least in my judgment a course between JFK's noble call and the rhetorical stance of some politicians that government is never the solution, only the problem.

Apart from his stale jokes, there are a couple things to notice here in the way Yudof frames the meaning of the rhetorical question and answer "Whose university? Our university!" As in the case of the protesters who chant these words, the question for Yudof is a rhetorical one -- the speaker already knows what the answer is. Tensions emerge at the seams, that is, over the path of the lines that we, with these words, attempt to trace between friends and enemies. What is at stake, in other words, is the meaning of the word "our" and, by extension, of its opposite, "them." Solidarity is how we define friends and enemies.

With this in mind, take a look at the gap between the prepared speech and the actual remarks. Yudof invokes the slogan, and goes on to claim that he understands where the students are coming from: "I do get the point the current students are trying to make." What they want is to have a stake in -- and here the speech diverges from the text -- not the "administration's decisions" but the decisions of the administration, the university, the legislature, the board of regents, and so on. In moving away from the prepared text, Yudof expands the political horizon of the students' supposed demands. How do we read this expansion? A generous reading might suppose that Yudof is acknowledging the call, for example, to "democratize the regents," that is, situating the protests within a broad political context and recognizing just how far-reaching these demands can be. (But we know what Yudof actually thinks about democratizing the regents: "I don't like it much personally speaking.")



Notably, one of the institutions that students supposedly want to have a stake in is not like the others: the administration, the university, and the board of regents constitute the governing apparatus of the UC, but to invoke the legislature is to shift the domain of struggle away from the space of the university. While seemingly expanding the political horizon of possibility, this move at the same time attempts to close the door on a set of tactics and strategies that have proven useful to students, workers, and faculty who see the UC administration as a necessary target in the struggle over public education and against austerity.

It is this move, furthermore, that enables the rest of Yudof's speech. The co-optation of the protest slogan allows him to push "far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general" to "American society as a whole." What he's driving at, in other words, is a more general question of political economy that focuses on the relationship between public and private goods. For Yudof, this argument serves a useful purpose because it situates politics firmly within the realm of the state and within the strategy of the vote. Politics is thus reduced to little more than a question of persuasion, of campaigning, of donations -- similarly, it is isolated within the relatively homogeneous field of political parties, all of which, it turns out, are down with austerity.

Yudof has other reasons for abstracting the conflict to an oversimplified discussion of public and private goods -- because his proposal is to sketch out a "balanced" approach or middle ground. This "hybrid university," as he calls it, occupies an uncomfortable position between the two poles. Uncomfortable because of its instability, oscillating from private to public and back again throughout the talk. But these are rhetorical hues -- the hybrid university that Yudof outlines ends up resembling a corporation more than anything else. He declares, for example, that universities must "look at their operations with a 'private' sensibility. They should establish realistic priorities, eliminate weak programs, adopt money-saving IT services, and aggressively reduce waste." Not only must it adopt corporate practices, but it must also be seen and imagined through a corporate, economistic lens:

[T]he university maintains a critical role in this state's wealth creation. Because if the pie doesn't grow, it's difficult to realize the ambition of bridging the divide between our private and public sectors.

So, in order to preserve these missions, public universities must be able to depend on a three-part funding base -- one of student-family contribution, private support and state funding.

The equilibrium of the "hybrid university," balanced between private and public funding, is undone: the "three-part funding base" has overturned the dual foundations that Yudof originally seemed to propose. It is now two parts private (the student-family debt burden along with corporate investment) to one part public (state funding). As Bob Meister has observed, however, the UC administration has a vested interest in shifting away from state funding, which comes with certain restrictions regarding how it can be used:

[A]lthough tuition can be used for the same purposes as state educational funds, it can also be used for other purposes including construction, the collateral for construction bonds, and paying interest on those bonds. None of the latter uses is permissible for state funds, so the gradual substitution of tuition for state funds gives UC a growing opportunity to break free of the state in its capital funding.

In attempting to shift the location of "Our university!" to the broad terrain of democracy and the "American public in general," Yudof constructs a unified "we" that seeks to conjoin the administration with the protesters, blurring and diffusing the tensions between these structurally opposed positions. Against this "we," presumably, stands the "them" of the state. But we know that those who run the UC are the state: Yudof himself was appointed by the Board of Regents, each of whom was directly appointed by the governor, commonly in return for political favors. Sacramento is everywhere. Yudof's "we" thus serves to confuse and disrupt our lines of solidarity. In the end, it is the UC administration that is to be held responsible for the tuition increases, for the layoffs, for programs eliminated, at the same time as they increase their own ranks and salaries. They are austerity; they are our enemies.

Austerity, of course, is implemented at the barrel of a gun. Behind every fee increase stands a line of riot cops. It goes without saying that Yudof is well aware of this. Returning to his speech at ALI, we find the following paragraph early in his prepared remarks:

I've been forced to preside over the furlough of employees, myself included, and a 40 percent increase in tuition. I've faced a variety of demonstrations -- a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. It's certainly given me a new perspective on my First Amendment course.

But what he actually says is this (starting at 9:10):

I've been forced to do some things which I daresay have not been popular with the faculty, the staff, and the students. I've presided over furloughs of virtually all of our employees, including me -- that really hurt, they celebrated my furlough days at the office; a 40 percent increase in tuition in three years; and I've found . . . that I always had an enthusiasm for the First Amendment. I taught a course on it, Constitutional Law. What can I say: California is a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. [Laughter] It's certainly given me a certain perspective on the Constitution: if I ever go back to law teaching, which I expect, I'm going to start with the Second Amendment, that's my plan. [Laughter] And I may deal with quartering of soldiers, I don't know, Letters of Marque and Reprisal, there are all sorts of things I could deal with. [Laughter]

This is lawyerly humor of the pathological variety -- it's no wonder the lawyers in the audience crack up. Yudof's response to the protests is not, as he suggests in the earlier passage, to "ruminate" on the students' demands, but to rhetorically draw his gun and quarter his soldiers (UCPD) on university grounds. This is the kind of leadership that ends in Jared Kemper pulling his gun on unarmed students at the UC Regents' meeting in November 2010; and police surveillance and infiltration of student groups across the UC system.


And those Letters of Marque and Reprisal?

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government license authorizing a private vessel to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale.

What we have here, in other words, is a declaration of war. But this war takes a very specific form: the state-sponsored and -authorized expropriation and privatization of enemy (in this case public) goods. In this little bit of improvisation, Yudof reveals, if not the administration's strategy of counterinsurgency, then certainly the violent logic of austerity in its clearest form. Behind heavily-armed and militarized agents vested with the full juridical authority of the state, austerity advances slowly but steadily.

* * *

What we mean when we shout "Whose university? Our university!" has little to do with the legislature or the American public in general. It has to do, as one might expect, with the university. It is our demand that those work at and use the university, those who make it run, those who schedule, teach, and take the classes, those who advise and provide support, those who maintain its spaces -- in short, everything but the bloated administration -- are the ones who should run the university. "We" face off against "them"; they are the management, the administrators. In the end, they will be abolished, as we have no need for their dismal cutbacks, their prefabricated capital projects, their rules of conduct, or their police. They are useless to us.

WHOSE UNIVERSITY? OUR UNIVERSITY!

UC Regents Meeting, May 17-18

Today and tomorrow the UC Regents are meeting once again at UCSF Mission Bay, certainly the most out-of-the-way and at the same time one of the most heavily policed of all the UC campuses, to discuss cuts in funding from the state in light of the May revision of Governor Brown's original budget proposal, which was released yesterday. While the budget revision is largely being touted in the media as good news due to the fact that revenues have so far been unexpectedly high, a closer look reveals that the crisis remains basically unchanged. $500 million worth of cuts for the UC system, and another $500 million for the CSU system, have already passed the California legislature, and will not be recovered. Furthermore, the budget revision continues to rely on the successful passage of several tax extensions -- an outcome that is far from guaranteed and indeed looks increasingly unlikely.

UC President Mark Yudof released a statement yesterday on the budget revision. In it, he once again stakes out a position not against budget cuts but against more budget cuts:

Today, in issuing a May revision of his budget proposal, the governor also described reductions that would be proposed should the state adopt an "all-cuts" budget in lieu of extending certain temporary taxes.

The governor in his budget document asserted that, in an all-cuts budget, reductions in state funding for the University of California would be doubled, to $1 billion in cuts.

A cut of this magnitude would be unconscionable -- to the university, its students and families, and to the state that it has served for nearly a century and a half.

Doubling the cut would reduce the state's contribution to the university's core funds -- monies that pay professors and staff members, light the libraries, maintain the campuses, and all the rest -- to roughly $2 billion. State funding of UC at this diminished level has not been seen since the early 1990s, a time when the university enrolled 80,000 fewer students.

Yudof's entire argument is based on the premise that the first $500 million is no big deal. It's gone, disappeared, vanished, erased, like it never happened. Let bygones be bygones. What matters, in other words, is not the cut but only the possibility of "doubling the cut." One way of reading this argument is that Yudof is being proactive -- he's getting out there ahead of the curve, to denounce budget cuts before they happen. To a certain extent, that's true. But the problem is that once the budget cuts actually happen -- and they always happen, sooner or later -- they are automatically taken off the table in the name of "being pragmatic." The new budget, with $500 million less, becomes the new baseline against which all future arguments about the budget are framed. Clearly, this is not the way to defend public education. On the other hand, it's a great way to continue to push tuition increases on the public, transferring the burden of debt from the university to the individual student and enabling the university to sell highly rated construction bonds for further infrastructure development.

Yudof goes on to declare that "What this reduction most likely would mean . . . is the need to yet again raise tuition." This statement ignores the fact, to begin with, that an 8 percent tuition increase is already programmed for next fall. Yudof loves to gloss over that increase. In an interview back in March, for example, he asserted that "I’m not planning on recommending a fee hike beyond what is already on the books, which is 8 percent in September." The structure of his claim mirrors that of the statement on the budget revision -- once something happens, it's like it never happened.

The corrupt, unaccountable, millionaire UC Regents aren't going to make any decisions at this meeting. But they've made clear that, in addition to the 8 percent fee hike that will go into effect however much they try to talk around it, they're liable to raise tuition by another 32 percent if the tax extensions in the new budget aren't approved. In that situation, furthermore, the CSU trustees will raise tuition by another 32 percent over and above the 10 percent increase they've already programmed in for the fall. 32 percent, it seems, is the magic number.

Three News Updates on University Governance

We wanted to note a few important news items that were brought to our attention today, all of which pertain in some way or another to general questions of university governance. First and foremost, as we noted several days ago, today was what the California Professor called "the Ides of May" in that Governor Jerry Brown revealed the revisions to his original budget proposal. There really was no question about whether or not Brown would change his approach and drop the austerity model that has characterized his politics since the 1970s. For Brown, it's all austerity, all the time.

Now, current revenues are unexpectedly high, coming in at $2.8 billion above what was predicted. But Brown, despite some minor changes, is basically sticking to his guns:

I only have a few minutes today to look at the Governor's May budget revision, and here's what I see. Current-year revenues are up $2.8 billion over forecasts, and $6.6 billion over two years. Governor Brown, true to his turnscrew austerity vision of a Hooverite unstimulus for all Californians, increases allocations to no one except K-12 and the community colleges "pursuant to Proposition 98," and, unbelievably, prisons, with a drop for mental health (page 4).

The Regents' strategy of saying that state funding is never coming back has paid off big-time: UC and CSU get exactly zero -- not even a $10 million or $50 million booby prize for not fighting the $500 million cuts. The crappy squeezing of health services is intact (page 3), as is the closing of 70 state parks to save a whopping $11 million this year. There is no wavering of Gov Brown's vision in which the government's one and only priority is reducing the deficit.

Even worse, as Michael Meranze observes, the budget revision still assumes that almost all of the tax extensions proposed by Brown in the original budget will be approved. "In other words, it is still possible that he will end up with an 'all-cuts' budget with even more fierce slashing of the budget for education, health, etc."

Second, as you will no doubt remember, over the last month we've been watching an internal election build up and take place in the UAW local 2865, which represents graduate students in the UC system. Inspired by the generalized protests against budget cuts and the current leadership's absolute failure to provide any sort of resistance to the university administration, the AWDU caucus emerged to challenge the incumbents (calling themselves USEJ, but also known as the Administration Caucus) in the triennial election which took place at the end of April. An attempt at fraud on the part of the incumbents led to a sit-in/occupation of the UAW office in downtown Berkeley; eventually all the votes were counted and AWDU emerged the winners, taking control of every single seat on the Executive Board and almost 60 percent of the positions on the Joint Council. This is a major victory.

USEJ, as you might imagine, is not happy with the results. And now they're trying to challenge them by leveling allegations of fraud against AWDU and demanding what is essentially a do-over! As thosewhouseit points out:

So if you can’t actually win an election with the popular vote, declare it invalid and hope you win the next time around? Look at how ridiculous some of these allegations are.

This is why it is a very serious violation of the Election Committee protocol that one slate’s supporters (AWDU) was left alone with the ballot boxes for 4-5 days, after the elections committee felt compelled to suspend counting on April 30.

The Admin Caucus dominated elections committee suspended the election unilaterally and without quorum. AWDU supporters locked the ballots in a room at UCLA and set up a webcam monitoring the ballots for the duration of the time they were left unattended. There were no AWDU members in there with the ballot boxes. Another crazy allegation:

[A] poll worker at the Sather Gate voting location at UC Berkeley was reaching into a wide-open ballot box during polling hours on April 27

We can’t believe they have the audacity to try to get this photo clearly taken before the polls opened to qualify as an impropriety. Preposterous. The poll worker is setting up the ballot box before the polls opened for the day. As we’ve explained before, this is pretty obvious if you look at the sunlight coming from the east in the picture. There’s no basis for counting this out of context photograph as evidence of anything, tampering or otherwise. If AC/USEJ can point to any more specific evidence of fraud on display in the photograph that we’re just too dense to comprehend, we’d be happy to hear it. We’re waiting.

We can't hope to cover this issue with the same attention to detail as our compañeros at thosewhouseit, so for the continuing struggle in the union we recommend you check out their blog.

Finally, we wanted to bring your attention to one final update: student-regent Jesse Cheng, who was found "responsible" (i.e. guilty) for sexual battery by the Office of Student Conduct at UC Irvine back in March, has officially resigned from the Board of Regents. (Here is the statement he released.) Note that, as far as we can tell, Cheng was not forced out, but rather resigned of his own accord. Now, we have long argued on this blog that the student conduct process is a disciplinary process that, together with UCPD, constitutes the repressive apparatus of the university. We have seen OSC operate in violation of its own rules and protocols, and furthermore have come to realize that even when it acts according to these rules, its actions are governed by what one critic has called "the rule of the arbitrary." But we have also noted OSC's striking lack of follow-through regarding cases of violence against women, rape, and sexual assault. To us, this confirms our suspicion that the student conduct process operates primarily as a machine for suppressing political dissent, and only secondarily (if at all) to uphold some vague standard of student safety. (Indeed, their standard is not safety at all, but the bureaucratic construct of "health-and-safety.") It is in this sense that the official conduct process for Cheng ended, effectively, without sanction. It is only by extra-official means -- that is, by protest action -- that he was pushed out.

[Update Tuesday 9:49am]: Further thoughts on Jesse Cheng's resignation from Angus Johnston, who compares the leniency in his case with the exorbitant sanctions meted out against the "Irvine 11," who were arrested and punished for speaking out during a public lecture given by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren:

That Cheng received probation, and was allowed to keep his seat on the UC Regents until he himself chose to give it up, while the Irvine 11 saw the student organization to which they belong suspended and now each face the possibility of six months in jail? That’s not right. That’s not proportionate. That’s not legitimate.

And that disproportion, that illegitimacy, casts the whole University of California judicial system, as well as the UC’s relationship with law enforcement, into question.

Wheeler Conduct Hearing Continues Tomorrow

The conduct hearing for a student protester arrested early in the morning on November 20, 2009 during the occupation of Wheeler Hall, which began in early March, will continue tomorrow. (Originally it was scheduled to continue on April 1, but they must have realized that doing so would be the only possible way to make the conduct procedures even more of a joke.) This hearing is public -- which presumably means no censorship of Twitter -- and it will feature what is likely to be yet another masterful performance from UC Berkeley law student (and adviser to the defendant) Thomas Frampton, last seen kicking the shit out of the charges alleged against another Wheeler occupier. In the other corner, representing the Office of Student Conduct, is Jeff Woods -- the only one left, after his former colleague quit her job soon after getting destroyed by Frampton.

This will be quite a show. Come one, come all! The hearing will take place at the usual location, Clark Kerr campus, building 14, and will begin Monday, April 18 at 2:30 pm. Hopefully there will be some tweeting happening for those who can't make it -- we'll update here or on twitter as we get more info.

And we wanted to leave you with a quote from the Associate Dean of Students, Christina Gonzalez, who has herself been implicated in some of the most significant procedural violations of the Code of Conduct on the part of the UC Berkeley administration (namely the illicit extension of the timeline). Here's what she told the Daily Cal recently about the Code:

She added that sometimes issues arise because of a panel chair's interpretation of the idea of a closed hearing as well as the "poorly written" nature of the campus code.

"Honestly, part of the issue is that panel chairs also don't always know what is acceptable and what's not," she said. "That doesn't mean that it's OK, but it's probably a good reason why we're doing a revision of the code."

[Update Monday 12:06 pm]: If you're interested in following the hearing, @reclaimuc and @sgnfr will be live-tweeting it.

More Fee Hikes, More Administrative Lies

Last Thursday, UC administrators including President Mark Yudof sat down for an interview with reporters for a number of UC newspapers. In between the bullshit and propagandizing, the following exchange took place:

California Aggie, UC Davis: So LAO [Legislative Analyst's Office] also recommended a 7 percent fee hike in the next academic year — what do you think about that?

Yudof: Well, my position right now is, we’ve hit you so hard I’m not planning on recommending a fee hike beyond what is already on the books, which is 8 percent in September.

Today, the UC Regents (among which Yudof counts himself) met at UCSF Mission Bay. Here's what came out of that meeting:

SAN FRANCISCO -- Students are likely to bear the brunt of the University of California's budget crisis for years to come.

UC likely will face a $1.5 billion budget gap in the next few years even under the rosiest scenarios, UC regents were told Wednesday.

As a result, administrators said, the university probably will need to lean on students for annual tuition increases. Among four scenarios discussed Wednesday, only one would come close to bridging the deficit: annual tuition and state funding increases of 8 percent.

But a rebound in flagging state money is unlikely, so the university most likely would rely on a combination of cuts and tuition hikes. If the state contributes no additional money in the next four years and UC does not make additional cuts, for example, tuition would need to rise more than 18 percent per year to make up the difference, the university said.

In other words, 40 percent in the last two years wasn't enough -- despite their "good intentions," despite their sympathetic words, despite their lobbying in Sacramento, despite their bullshit "advocacy," they're still raising our tuition. The decisions apparently won't be finalized until May. But whatever happens, we can say one thing with certainty: the administration lies. Fuck the administration, fuck their cuts, and fuck their fee hikes!

FIGHT BACK - WALKOUT - STRIKE - DISRUPT EVERYTHING - OCCUPY EVERYTHING - TAKE WHAT'S OURS - DO IT NOW

"Reasonable Adjustments"

As everybody who's been following this stuff is aware, UC Berkeley's Code of Student Conduct and the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) that administers it are a complete disaster. One concrete issue for which we've only just begun to scratch the surface has to do with systematically and structurally downplaying or overlooking sexual violence -- not to mention, in a number of cases, exacerbating its emotional impact on survivors. We will be following up on this in further posts.

But for now we wanted to follow up on a different thread. Another problem with OSC and the Code, which generally falls under the rubric of what's been called "the rule of the arbitrary," comes down to the fact that -- totally apart from the arbitrary uses to which pathetic OSC bureaucrats put it -- the Code enshrines the arbitrary as the basic mode of operation: "even when the Code is followed to the letter, its 'rule' is inescapably arbitrary and subject to the whims and political interests of the administration." There are two ways of making this argument: one frames it as a problem with the way the Code is written, that it contains certain unconstitutional provisions, for example, which could be resolved by re-writing them; the other sees these problems as structural, rooted in and basic to the daily operations of the neoliberal university, embedded to the point that no revisions could hope to resolve them satisfactorily. The latter formulation looks to abolish the Code and OSC, while the former looks to the administration-led Task Force that is currently working on a new set of revisions to the Code.

On this note, we've received an email that was sent by Vice Chancellor Harry Le Grande, who is heading up the Task Force, to the rest of the members, in which he proposes inserting an additional clause in order to codify a certain "flexibility" with regard to the Code. As a suggestion, he includes a provision that appears to come from the UC Santa Cruz Code of Student Conduct. Here's the email:

All,

I would like to discuss the possibility of having a clause in the code that would allow for the process to be suspended, but still allow for due process and provisions to remain. I think it would mostly result in being used in large disciplinary cases that the normal process has little ability to impact without it being an exception.

Below is text from another UC that allows that option. I would like to discuss this at our next general meeting.

"104.32 In the interest of fair administration of these regulations and procedures, and consistent with law and university policy, the chancellor or designees may interpret and make reasonable adjustments to jurisdictional and other provisions."

This clause would codify the "rule of the arbitrary" in the Code's provisions -- it would allow the administration to do literally anything it sees fit, from suspending the timeline, to eliminating the role of the adviser, to getting rid of the student's right to remain silent. Anything you imagine would be subject to the will of the administration. That this clause is currently part of Code at UCSC is extremely worrisome, and suggests that it's not simply a case of administrative overreach that will necessarily be overruled at the next Task Force meeting. But it is exactly what we should expect, to the extent that the university claims absolute jurisdiction over both the individual student's body and the collective student body. This is the paternalistic claim that Le Grande and his cronies in the administration stand for: "University knows best."

Conduct Hearing Continues [Updated: Defendant Found Not Guilty on All Counts!]

From thosewhouseit:

If you recall, we reported a little over a week ago that our comrade Julian Martinez’s student conduct hearing for the 11/20/09 Wheeler occupation ended before it even began. It was scheduled for Friday, February 18th, but the hearing panel spent most of the evening deliberating over several procedural matters, and neither side even had the opportunity to present their respective opening statements. After graduate student panelist David Fannon recused himself, Martinez’s hearing was rescheduled for February 28th. Martinez is not the only Wheeler student currently in the hearing stage of the student conduct process, but his hearing is the only one currently open to the public. Please come out and show your support!

We’ll have info on subsequent public hearings shortly. It sounds like one of our closest comrades will have his hearing for the Wheeler occupation a week from tomorrow. We’ll post details once it’s confirmed. In the meantime, please, please, please come out to Julian’s hearing and show him some solidarity.

The hearing will begin at 5:30 pm, Monday, February 28 in Building 14 on the Clark Kerr Campus.

[Update Monday, 12:45pm]: If you want to follow the hearing, it looks like @callie_hoo will be doing some live-tweeting.

[Update Tuesday, 7:58am]: Julian found "not responsible" (i.e. not guilty) for ANY of the charges against him! This is the one of the first times a protester from November 2009 has been cleared -- and, notably, it is the only time where the defendant's "adviser" (i.e. lawyer or lawyer-like helper) has been allowed to speak. Congratulations to Julian and to his adviser Thomas Frampton! Here's the summary from thosewhouseit:

For the first time, the Berkeley Office of Student Conduct (OSC) lost its case against a student protester who occupied Wheeler Hall on 11/20/09. Julian Martinez was found not guilty on all counts. The verdict was read around 1:30 am last night at his hearing on the Clark Kerr Campus. We highly recommend reading over the de facto summary on our comrade’s live-tweet. Thomas Frampton from the Campus Rights Project (CRP) ripped it. Highlights include Thomas telling the panel he is offended as a Berkeley student that this is the standard of justice on campus; pointing out that OSC threw a charge intended for rapists at most of the Wheeler occupiers; and telling the arresting officer that he is an embarrassment to UCPD. Congrats to Julian, Thomas, and CRP, and ironic kisses to the career functionaries at OSC.

We can draw several immediate conclusions from this decision. First, of course, it demonstrates the utter incompetence of OSC, which was unable to prove (even given the absurdly low standard of proof) that one of the protesters who was arrested in Wheeler Hall during the occupation was "responsible" (i.e. guilty) for even a single charge. At times like this, such incompetence ends up working out in the favor of student protesters; most of the time, however, it works against us. The reason is that the student conduct procedure is specifically designed to hold certain kinds of people (namely, students) accountable, while consistently letting administrators and institutions at large off the hook. Thus, we should not take this as a sign that "the system works" or let down our guard in any way -- rather, we should recognize that what just happened is a flaw in the system. We should also expect that flaw to be "resolved" quickly -- much like the comment made by undergraduate member of the hearing panel on her AOL Lifestream page four days after Julian's prehearing ("Never pass up an opportunity to castrate a man") has since been removed. Don't worry -- we saved a screenshot of it. [Editor's note: As of 6/23/2020 we have edited this post to remove the identifying information of the undergraduate member of the hearing panel.]

Second, this decision demonstrates the significance of affording students their full due process rights instead of the abridged version on which the student conduct procedure is based. Julian's case is the first time a protester from the 2009 occupations has been able to have his adviser speak for him; significantly, it is also the first time all the charges have been overturned. What this demonstrates -- and this is fairly obvious, but it still needs to be said -- is that someone who is trained in dealing with such pseudo-legal matters is obviously better at it than someone who isn't. By forcing students to defend themselves, OSC and the UC administration are blatantly attempting to skew the playing field.

Third, this decision calls into question all previous and future decisions regarding protesters from the 2009 occupations. What Frampton referred to as the "three P's" during the hearing -- procedure, politics, and proof -- are more or less the same in very case, and the university has failed in each of them. All previous decisions against student protesters have therefore been reached wrongly and should be retroactively dismissed; simultaneously, all future decisions must be seen through the lens of what happened here. This will be especially true if an adviser is not allowed to speak for his or her client.

Hanging by a Thread

Fuck the regents. More information here.

Behind Every Fee Increase... A Line of Private Security Guards?

Sometimes it's hard to decide which parts of a UC Regents' meeting to highlight. Everything about these meetings in general is just terrible, pretty much across the board. Right now, the regents are stoked about the state's budget cuts, looking for every opportunity to raise tuition (they're proposing another 6.25 percent hike), fire workers (now they're saying a thousand) and cut pensions -- the whole conflict over Dean Edley's astoundingly self-centered view of the crisis seems to offer UCOP and the regents an beautiful conjuncture in which they can slash worker pensions and come off looking like the good guys. Still, there's a couple of details we wanted to flag from this summary of yesterday's meeting. First, this is kind of amazing:

Yudof said the university has long operated on three "compass points" -- access, affordability and excellence.

"We are moving dangerously close to having to say: pick two of the three. That’s my view, and the excellence is nonnegotiable," he said. "We are going to have to look at access and affordability."

I think that speaks for itself. Also, this:

Relatively few members of the public -- including faculty, staff and students -- attended the meeting. In fact, uniformed and plainclothes UC police and yellow-jacketed private security guards outnumbered the public.

Behind every fee increase, a line of private security guards. The riot cops, of course, are right behind them.