Protest, Policing, and the UC Regents' Committee on Finance

The UC Regents are having another meeting on May 16, and tuition hikes are once again on the table. According to the budget report [pdf] to the Committee on Finance, the Regents will discuss the possibility of raising tuition and fees by 6 percent for the fall 2012 semester as well as an additional, mid-year tuition hike "in the range of double digits" for spring 2013 if Governor Brown's tax proposal doesn't pass in November. Chris Newfield's analysis of the budget scenarios is a must read here.

But there's something on the Committee on Finance's agenda that appears at first glance to be strangely out of place. Nestled between discussions of expenditure rates for the general endowment pool and plans for the formation of a captive insurance agency, we find Discussion Item F7, titled "Update regarding Report to the President on Response to Protest on University of California Campuses."

This is a reference, of course, to the Robinson-Edley Report [pdf], which was released in draft form last week to great media fanfare. The text of the discussion item [pdf] for the Regents' meeting is more or less the Executive Summary of the report. Writing at the request of UC President Mark Yudof in the wake of the November 9 police riot at UC Berkeley, General Counsel Charles Robinson and Dean Christopher Edley were charged with generating a set of best policing practices for UC campuses to use in dealing with future protests. The infamous pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis the following week only intensified the report's urgency. Over the course of 50 recommendations (although the version for the Regents' meeting appears to contain only 48 -- it's not clear which two recommendations have been removed), it suggests that the issue at hand is essentially one of free speech. As the Executive Summary states,

This Report is premised on the belief that free expression, robust discourse, and vigorous debate over ideas and principles are essential to the mission of our University. The goal of this Report is to identify practices that will facilitate such expression — while also protecting the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff, police, and the general public. (1)

Joshua Clover has recently shown how the frame of rights and free speech represents a fundamental misrecognition about what is happening on UC campuses and around the world. According to this understanding, the sequence of events goes something like this: students protest, then police respond. Perhaps the police respond a little too hard, arresting a few too many protesters, using a little too much pepper spray. So the administration steps in and formulates a new set of policing practices to ensure that in the future this kind of excessive force isn't deployed. Here, the issue at hand is one of demarcating the limits of protest as speech, of regulating the proper relations between protesters and police.

In fact, as Clover points out, the sequence of events is very different. It begins not with students arbitrarily protesting, but with the administration developing and implementing austerity policies across the UC system -- raising tuition, cutting classes, firing workers, increasing out-of-state admissions, and so on, austerity's myriad manifestations within the particular context of the post-crisis university. These struggles are not rhetorical but material; they are about how the university is run, about what, under the technocratic directives of the UC administration, the university is coming to be. By displacing these struggles onto the terrain of speech, we unwittingly let the administration off the hook: "One suspects there will be some payouts to injured students, and that a cop or two will be pastured. And the matter will be tentatively resolved, despite the economic content remaining entirely unaddressed; thus, the administration wins by 'losing.'"

This is precisely what the Robinson-Edley report does. Without going into too much detail, it's worth looking at an example. One thing that jumps out in the report is the extent to which the authors see the problem as rooted at least in part in students' ignorance: "We also were struck by a more fundamental information gap," write the authors. "[M]ost members of our community know very little about our campus police departments" (23). Apparently, this is not for lack of opportunity. "At UC Santa Cruz, for example, the police department offers a quarter-long course titled 'Citizen Police Academy,' for up to twenty-five students, faculty, and staff. Class members gain a deep familiarity with the campus police department. In addition, on some of our campuses, the police make presentations at new student orientations. But these existing opportunities for students and other members of the University community to educate themselves about their campus police departments apparently have not satisfied the community’s desire for information" (24). Predictably, the report goes on to recommend more such classes, more opportunities for students to "become acquainted with the campus police agency" as well as "with the applicable rules for campus protest -- including rights and responsibilities, triggers for an administration or police response, the response option framework, and alternate modes for engaging with authorities" (26).

The objective is to transform struggles over privatization into a sort of choreographed dance between students and police, to minimize or obscure the work of the administration, and to avoid at all cost any disturbance of the material operations of the university. Despite the much-hyped statement in the Executive Summary that administrators and police will have to stop thinking primarily in terms of "the maintenance of order and adherence to rules and regulations," this order is ultimately upheld as fundamental. In response to concerns that arose from the UC Davis pepper-spraying incident, the report recommends not that pepper-spray should be eliminated but that "event response team’s guidelines, should specify that administrators will not authorize any physical police response against protesters non-aggressively linking arms unless the protesters were significantly interfering with the academic mission of the campus" (37). In the end, order must be maintained, the restructuring of the university must continue unabated.

* * *

Why, then, are protest and policing a concern of the UC Regents' Committee on Finance? No doubt some of the recommendations in the Robinson-Edley report will require some appropriation of funds to implement -- mainly the hiring and training of police officers (Recommendation Group 4) and the surveillance and monitoring of protest actions (Recommendation Group 7). But these will be minor expenses and anyway have little to do with UC finances at large. This apparently unlikely arrangement must be read as an acknowledgment, on the part of the UC's top managers, of what campus protests are really about. They know that the only thing standing in the way of their austerity policies, of their ever accelerating and increasingly desperate attempts to tie the university to the financial markets, student tuition, and debt, are the students and workers -- and occasionally faculty -- standing in their way, literally using their bodies to keep the machine from operating.

It could not be otherwise. At the UC today, protest and policing are inextricably a question of finance.

Reflections from UC Davis: On Academic Freedom and Campus Militarization

 

The following article by Joshua Clover was just published in College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies. A PDF of the article is available here. We recommend reading it next to the latest piece from Nathan Brown, "Administrative Totalitarianism at the UC and the Necessity of Direct Action by Faculty."

The autumn of 2011 offered extraordinary images of police brutality against students (and not students alone) on University of California campuses. Two stand out, both seemingly following on from the national Occupy movement. On November 9, students attempting to ‘occupy’ a grassy area at the edge of Berkeley’s famed Sproul Plaza, next to the Mario Savio Steps, were batoned by riot police summoned to campus by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, first during the day, and then again that night when Occupy Cal returned. In no small part because a couple of professors were among the beaten, the event became a national news story. This would pale in comparison to events on the Davis campus nine days later, when a low-key tent occupation on the quad — Occupy UC Davis — was broken up by riot police summoned by Chancellor Linda Katehi from three jurisdictions. The images of one corpulent and distressingly nonchalant officer disbursing military-grade pepper spray to the faces of a couple dozen seated students would swiftly become one of the iconic images of the year, not just for the campus or the university but globally.

In train, there has been considerable discussion of removing the Chancellors who either authorized such actions or were too incapable to command the situation adequately. There has also been a perhaps more consequential debate around the presence of police on college campuses, regarding either their presence per se (for those familiar with the internationally and historically common situation of police-free universities), or in terms of their increasingly militarized form. And these changes in campus dynamics — toward the heavy hand bearing advanced weaponry — have prompted concerns about the implications for the intellectual and academic pursuits of the university, and what we might expect to develop from here.

I want to argue as directly as possible that grasping this new security regime as primarily pertinent to campus intellectual climate is misguided. While this line of inquiry is no trivial matter, it confuses and obscures core issues.

The confusion comes from two entangled commonplaces regarding these dramatic events (and others like them in kind, if not in media saturation). The first is the assumption that we can identify in each case a two-part sequence of cause and effect, in which students protest and police overreact disastrously. The second (with evident implications for the question of academic freedom tout court), is that this to-and-fro is to be conceived exclusively as a freedom of speech issue.

These assumptions form a unity. In this understanding, students first protest, as students are wont to do. The question arises as to the limits of protest, and to what extent certain actions — in this case, politicized camping — count as protected speech. ‘Time, place, and manner’ provisions are invoked; the police are summoned, heavy with tools. Orders to disperse are given, no dispersal is forthcoming, and then the intolerable thing happens, and everyone scrambles to understand and manage the aftermath.

There can be no doubt that these ‘overreactions’ are judiciously calculated to produce a chilling effect on student struggle. As with the endless nuisance charges levied against student (and other) organizers, they are designed to exhaust resources, both inner and material. And further there can be no doubt that this chilling effect spills over to the entire campus. In this sense it is certainly reasonable to consider the implications of these actions for free thought and intellectual exploration.

But there are also good reasons — better reasons, I believe — not to shift the debate onto the terrain of thought, ideas, expression, and so forth. It has suited all sides to allow that this drama revolves around First Amendment issues. Under considerable internal and external pressure, both Chancellors conceded that in these cases, the riot police may indeed have curtailed what really should be protected rights of speech and assembly. Katehi insisted (twice; she is in the habit of using the same formulaic language in multiple press releases) that: “Our campus is committed to providing a safe environment for all to learn freely and practice their civil rights of freedom of speech and expression” (2011a, 2011b); her counterpart at Berkeley, Chancellor Birgeneau, extolled the same virtues. Meanwhile, students did not hesitate to pillory both administrations for having failed the Bill of Rights, while dismayed if still-timorous faculty demanded that Birgeneau “respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus” (UC Berkeley Academic Senate 2011).

The fantasy at play here is that what has gone wrong somehow concerns the excessive assertion of First Amendment rights by students, or conversely, the excessive limiting of same by the administration. The logical remedy is inevitably discovered to be a rebalancing of these matters, extending adequate protections to ‘protest’ and ‘expression’ as abstract ends in and of themselves.

The underlying reality is radically different. What must first be recognized is that in neither case did we see the abstract two-part motion, protest/repression. The unity of each event is considerably more concrete: administrations must deploy force to implement austerity policies. The initiating acts were not student protests but university policies designed to assure that the costs of running an educational system increasingly devolve to students, who are at once ever more compelled to pursue higher education for competitive advantage in a forbidding employment landscape, and concomitantly less able to afford the same without increased debt and workloads.

This misrecognition of the sequence of substantive events is compounded by another, whereby the campus protests are presented as arising from the charisma of Occupy Wall Street and the ensuing national movement over the course of the preceding months. As the Occupy movement has not made a significant issue of education, and as students (especially at purportedly elite or top-tier universities) are often thought to be cushioned at least temporarily from the buffets of the economy (especially the employment market), the inference is frequently drawn that the campus variants of Occupy are lacking real content of their own, and are thus reducible to protest for the sake of protest.

What is forgotten is that the Occupy movement, doubtless inspired by 2010’s ‘Arab Spring’ and Europe’s ‘Movement of the Squares,’ has its local roots in recent US campus organizing, specifically the anti-privatization campaigns of 2009-2010 on UC campuses. They have been ongoing if uneven, and characterized throughout by police violence. The shock over recent events at Berkeley and Davis this November must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, only two Novembers before, both Chancellors called riot police from multiple jurisdictions onto the same campuses to break up anti-privatization occupations. Both times, the police attacked non-violent protestors, and lawsuits are still pending. In short, we are looking at a clearly defined confrontation that has been in progress for some time, on the concrete terrain of economic crisis — not a timeless confrontation between academic freedom and policing, on the abstract terrain of rights.

So we might say that a mistaken assessment of the sequence of events, both this November and over the last few years, allows for a misrecognition of the fundamental issue.This seems perhaps a neutral slippage; aren’t rights good for everyone? However, this reflexive motion — in which future political organizing and action turns on itself to address the formal conditions of previous actions rather than the preceding causes — in actuality serves the university administration admirably by displacing the debate into the arena of form rather than content. The administration can offer a remedy, with tonalities of magnanimous self-correction: they can promise to be more thoughtful and diligent about respecting the right to protest, and thus seem to slip out of their position in the struggle, that is, as enthusiastic co-authors of the privatization process. They themselves turn to become a context, not a class antagonist.

This is indeed precisely what has happened. One suspects there will be some payouts to injured students, and that a cop or two will be pastured. And the matter will be tentatively resolved, despite the economic content remaining entirely unaddressed; thus, the administration wins by ‘losing.’

One can see that this movement has become a substantial quagmire for the professoriat within this political cycle: what is sometimes called ‘the articulation trap.’ It is a double truism of the faculty member’s position, especially the professor’s, that she is not identified clearly with either side of the current struggle between the economic interests of students and administrators; at the same time, her job’s basic supposition (especially in the humanities) is that position-taking is itself an action. These two factors supply a powerful if implicit determination toward intervening not by entering into the content of this struggle, but by offering, at a remove, often-eloquent assessments that tend toward seemingly neutral ethical (or pseudo-ethical) categories like rights and freedoms. I fear we professors are quite often guilty of looking for our car-keys under the streetlight — that is, participating in this particular antagonism in the ways we are best equipped for, rather than in the ways that the conditions and goals demand.

In thinking about campus militarization, UCSC professor Bob Meister provides an extraordinarily useful account of the relation between campus securitization and securitization of university economies, as they have recently developed. In his talk on “Debt, Democracy, and the Public University,” he sets forth the cruel historical developments through which William Bratton was retained to lead the investigation into the pepper spray incident, and what it reveals about “the link between the privatization of public universities, the financial services industry and the national security industry” (Meister 2011). Meister observes that:

Since 9/11 the US defense industry of the Cold War has morphed from being mainly in the military hardware business into a new role as global provider of security services that enables government and corporations throughout the world to outsource intelligence, policing, background checks, construction of secure sites and various operations that may need to be deniable — as well as the public relations efforts necessary to support such deniability.

Most Americans do not know that there is a huge domestic market for services provided by the defense industry....The fastest growing market for the defense and security services industry is in the area of local government and public agencies that feel threatened by political protests, such as the Occupy movement, and that have reporting and other obligations under the Patriot Act. Former LA Police Chief William Bratton was hired to build this market for Kroll Security by its parent company, Altegrity, a defense contractor that is itself now owned by a private equity firm that also invests in both for-profit higher education and financial services (Meister 2011).

While the specifics of such connections inevitably vary from place to place and situation to situation, the systemic logic is plain enough. Heightened campus security is inextricably linked to heightened campus securitization in its two main forms: the decision of universities to pursue a certain line of investment strategies which move money away from educational services and into capital projects; and the corresponding decision to cover those educational costs by shifting burdens to students at a rate which can only be financed though student loans, concomitantly providing profitable investment for banks laden with otherwise fallow capital. The rise in tuition and indebtedness within the context of economic crisis simply is the militarization of campus; they are one and the same.

It is impossible to conclude other than this: even if one does adhere to the belief that the matters of intellectual freedom, free speech, and free assembly are fundamental to this unfolding political economic sequence, the place where such things will be arbitrated is not on their own terrain — the terrain of formal rights — but elsewhere. The necessary arena in which such rights might be protected presently and for the longer durée is the arena of direct antagonism between, on the one side, those fighting against backdoor privatization and austerity programs on campus, and on the other, those who implement and enforce them. This is not a rhetorical struggle, and moreover, the retreat into the sphere of articulation risks affirming the misrecognition of the struggle’s character. Such formal rights are far less an enabling condition for this struggle than an outcome of its material content.

Professors: stand with your students, literally. It is the best thing to be done for academic freedom; it is the least you can do for them.

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]

Hunger Strike for Ethnic Studies Begins at UC Berkeley

This afternoon, after a joint teach-in on the administration's plans to consolidate Gender and Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, and African American Studies, a group of nine students began a hunger strike in front of California Hall. Some of the strikers are veterans of last year's hunger strike as well. Their demands are the following:

1. Reinstate the FTE staff positions in Ethnic Studies cut by organizational simplification under Operational Excellence
2. End the current process of Operational Excellence
3. Publicly support the Legislative Resolution ACR 34, co-authored by Ricardo Lara and Luis A. Alejo in Support of Ethnic Studies in California.
4. We demand that the administration publicly acknowledge the unfulfilled promise of the creation of a Third World College at UC Berkeley.

The administration has released an official response, which is available here. As expected, it not only treats the strikers like irrational children, but furthermore completely fails to respond to their demands. Instead, it tries to make them disappear by asserting that, despite all available evidence, the administration in fact shares the same goals: "Our hope is to understand one another better, given that we have the same ultimate goals for equity and inclusion." Oh really. Flashback to Yudof's recent comments on what he called the UC's "compass points":

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."

But we don't need to pick over the statements of UC administrators -- we have enough evidence right before our eyes. The fact is that through "Operational Excellence" UC Berkeley paid millions of dollars to the consulting firm Bain & Company to identify areas to "streamline" (that is, cut). As thosewhouseit reported earlier today from the hunger strike:

This afternoon, over 100 members of a coalition in defense of Ethnic Studies gathered at Sather Gate against the impending consolidation of their departments as part of Operational Excellence. OE, it should be noted, has now been exported to UCSB, UCSF, UC Davis, and UCLA.  We now have “Organizational Excellence,” “Operational Efficiency,” and God knows how many other variants. If Berkeley shelled out a cool $7 million to Bain, UCLA is using Huron, Davis ScottMadden Management, and Santa Barbara an “individual consultant.” Against this affront to Ethnic Studies under the guise of austerity, the 100-200 students and their faculty allies marched to California Hall after announcing the inauguration of a hunger strike. Eight students are now on hunger strike and stationed in front of California Hall.

There's one more piece of the administration's response that's worth noting. The concluding paragraph reads:

We are concerned that some students would endanger their health [or safety!!?!] by a hunger strike, and/or negatively impact their academic performance at the end of the semester. We have offered to meet with a small representative group, and this offer remains on the table. In the meantime, you are able to exercise free speech and protest, but are also bound by the campus rules on time, place, and manner (http://police.berkeley.edu/about_UCPD/news/news_101006.html). These rules preclude overnight lodging or camping.

Behind austerity measures, the threat of riot cops. But the administration's discourse is inherently paternalistic, even when it's actively engaged in threatening its students. This is reflected, to begin with, in the concern over "health [and safety]," a keyword that's been deployed frequently against student protest over the last year and a half. It also appears in the notion of "time, place, and manner" regulations, which proclaim the importance of free speech while relegating it to geographically isolated and temporally restricted areas. This is the logic of the "free speech" or "first amendment zone." Time, place, and manner -- a subject for a future post.

The New Censorship

Oh the irony. The UC Berkeley administration has long demonstrated a tendency toward censorship, despite its supposed "free speech" credentials. From "Time, Place, and Manner" regulations which attempt to restrict political activity to Sproul Plaza, to UCPD cops breaking into department libraries to steal students' materials, to the criminalization of chalking and distributing fliers, the so-called "home of the free speech movement" has become a complete joke.

Now they're trying to keep students from using Twitter.

This past Monday, during journalism student Josh Wolf's student conduct hearing for his presence at the Wheeler Hall occupation, the hearing panel all of a sudden discovered that @callie_hoo was live-tweeting the proceedings. Threatening the defendant, they demanded that the tweeting immediately stop. It is the height of irony that they would do this to a journalism student who was in Wheeler to document the action.

Now, we've just learned that the UC Berkeley administration is unilaterally threatening to cancel the negotiations about Operational Excellence planned for Friday afternoon. Chancellor Birgeneau agreed to meet with students as part of the concessions won during the occupation of the Wheeler ledge. The administration has thrown around the idea of canceling the meeting because they're scared that a rally might take place at the same time. Pobrecitos. In any case, we wanted to quote a line from the email sent to the negotiating team by Felicia Lee, Birgeneau's bureaucratic lackey. If the "dialogue" takes place, she writes,

As a matter of respect for all attendees, no tweets, texts, or recordings during the meeting are permitted. I trust you and the others will honor this request.

Home of the Free Speech Movement, indeed. Remember, these are some of the same folks who wanted to call a administrative unit specifically designed to monitor and infiltrate student protest actions the "Freedom of Expression Support Team." These people are sick.

"The Freedom of Expression Support Team"

From today's article in the California Aggie, following up on the UC Davis administration's decision to establish an official "team" to monitor and infiltrate the student protest movement:

The team's name was changed several times, once called the 'Activism Response Team' and 'The Freedom of Expression Support Team,' as revealed by various drafts of protocol and training guides.

Check out the rest of the article.

Berkeley Campus Monitor, Issue 2

The February/March 2011 issue of the Berkeley Campus Monitor, a broadside serving up "subterranean student news," has been released and is circulating around campus. This issue features an article by Slavoj Zizek on the revolution in Egypt, as well as articles taken from the blogs. Keep your eyes out for a hard copy, or check it out here.

Berkeley Campus Monitor

Issue 1, January 2011, contains both original pieces and some stuff taken off the blogs. The next issue, which should be coming out in the next couple days, will include Operational Excellence, political issues in the greater Bay Area, and more -- keep your eyes out for it.

Home of the Free Speech Movement

From ThoseWhoUseIt:

The plot thickens, coagulating into a repulsive glop.  Roughly an hour after we reported that a UC Berkeley undergrad was threatened with conduct sanctions by the Office of Student Conduct (OSC), we learned of 4 additional students and alumni -- all of whom were undergraduates during the period of the alleged violations -- who received similar charges.  Three of them received notices of possible violation seemingly identical to the one posted in our initial report. However, a fourth student -- a longtime contributor to this blog -- was threatened with charges not only for his alleged involvement in the chalking on November 19 (for which he too received an identical notice of possible violation), but also for his alleged activities at the Regents’ meeting on November 17. Because this author was present for our contributor’s arrest, I can attest to the fact that the arrestee violated no law. In fact, on the very evening of the 17th, CBS aired a video of our comrade being arrested. It clearly showed a line of students and workers linking arms in an attempt to prevent the Regents from leaving the parking deck. Our comrade was not one of these demonstrators. Instead, he walked up and down the line writing the phone number for the SF National Lawyers’ Guild on the forearms of the demonstrators with a permanent marker. In the CBS clip, a cop can be clearly seen pointing out our comrade to two other cops, at which point they walk up to him, violently throw him to the ground, beat him, and cuff him face down on the cement. At this point they hauled him off to a holding cell near the Civic Center. When he appeared for his arraignment a few weeks ago, no charges were filed. Obviously. He didn’t do a thing, and it’s all on video! We will provide the video clip at a later date, but he has asked us to protect his anonymity for the time being. However, we have obtained his notice of possible violation, which includes the following two charges:

102.13. Obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other University activities.

102.16. Failure to identify oneself to, or comply with the directions of, a University official or other public official acting in the performance of his or her duties while on University property or at official University functions; or resisting or obstructing such University or other public officials in the performance of or the attempt to perform their duties.

[...]

What a joke. According to the OSC’s own code of conduct -- explicitly referenced in this notice -- cases must be resolved within 75 days of the alleged incident. The fact that 5 of our comrades are receiving initial notices of possible violations 72 days afterward means that they will not even receive their notices of actual charges until well past the 75-day deadline. Of course, we all know that OSC unilaterally suspended their own timeline in a secret email from Associate Dean of Students Cristina Gonzalez to OSC Acting Director Susan Trageser in August of 2009. We have long had a copy of that email, and it explicitly suspends the timeline (which is beyond the scope of Dean Gonzalez’ authority by the way, not that it seems to matter) for a single academic year. That year has long been over. Unless there is another secret email in which an administrator declares a state of exception about which we have not yet heard, these bureaucrats are one-upping even the sovereign: refusing to declare a state of exception, they have decided to simply will it into existence. In other words, we do not need to be informed that the law has been suspended, nor do we even need documentation any longer; the suspension of the law itself no longer needs to remain within the formal bounds of legality!

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

Drop all charges against student protesters!

And seriously, if the only reason our comrade received a notice of possible violation for his alleged actions at the Regents’ meeting is because he was arrested; if that arrest appears in a widely available video in which it is quite clearly wrongful; and if no charges were actually filed against him, signaling that the SF DA is cognizant of this fact, on what basis is he being charged by OSC? More to the point, if OSC threatens students on the basis of formal legal sanctions that they receive on or off campus, why does OSC exist at all?

Abolish OSC!

Update: We have just learned that at least one UCSC student has been charged by OSC on he/r campus for an arrest at the Regents’ meeting. More details when we get them.

For a detailed account of the operations of Office of Student Conduct, see "On Administrative Conduct: Procedural Violations and the Rule of the Arbitrary" published in the most recent issue of Reclamations.

Surveillance

COPS OFF CAMPUS!
FIRE JARED KEMPER NOW!

(video from mobilize berkeley)

Home of the Free Speech Movement

Lt. Tejada can't spell

On the morning of October 7, the national day of action, UCPD officers broke into the Rhetoric Department library and confiscated banners.

The note reads:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
THE BANNERS IN THIS ROOM
WAS [sic] RECOVERED BY UCPD
AS FOUND PROPERTY IT IS
HELD AT UCPD ANY QUESTIONS
PLS CONTACT CAPT. RODRICK
LT. TEJADA

They did it again this week. This time, they stole the following materials, which had to be "re-recovered" from UCPD: a few boxes of paint, medical supplies, water, plus a couple of signs.

UC Berkeley: Home of the Free Speech Movement.

Statement from UC Berkeley Hunger Strike

Via email:

We, the hunger strikers of UC Berkeley, are calling out to all people of color, to our communities of color, to take a stand this Friday, May 7th at noon against racism and all the many forms that this oppression takes in our society. We call upon communities of color and all our allies to protest at locations of power, wherever it may be that you are best able to protest, whether that be an administration building or city hall. We must unite and let those in power know that we are standing together to oppose the criminalization of our communities. Let them know that we will not allow them to target workers for firings on our campuses through the misguided privatization policies of our campus administrations. Let them know that we will not allow them to target our fellow students that have stood up to them in past, that stand up to them in the present, and that will stand against them in future protests. Let them know that we are all one: workers, students, community members. Let it be known that we will not be divided.

The people in power do not think that we are a force to be reckoned with, they do not believe that our people will come together to oppose them. We began our hunger strike at noon on Monday and were met with abusive police tactics throughout the night. We were subjected to sleep deprivation, with threats of arrest if we were caught sleeping. The police would drive in circles around us throughout the night revving their engines and flashing their lights at our strikers as they huddled together for warmth. We did not break and will not break under these practices of torture.

Our administration told us that they would enter into discussions with us, but when we tried to bring in a representative of the workers, a member of our community, the doors were closed before her face. When one of the hunger strikers turned to leave in disgust, to leave this so called meeting, he was met with police force. One cop threw him to the steps twisting his arm behind him, while another cop knelt on his legs. We shall not be treated this way. As we sit here and see yet another hour pass of not eating, we now see that the police are coming out in numbers not yet seen, all armed with riot sticks...

As you read this know that students in a Los Angeles area high school have also begun a hunger strike in solidarity with the struggles of our communities in Arizona. They have decided that they will not end their hunger strike until we end the hunger strike at UC Berkeley. Know that the city of Oakland voted unanimously to boycott Arizona on May the 4th. Let us all come together and hold protests throughout the state, let our people in Arizona hear our cries of protest, that we will stand with them and not take this oppression any longer.

This is why we are calling upon our sisters and brothers, why we are encouraging everyone to protest and initiate hunger strikes at the offices of your campus administrations. The administration is afraid. They are afraid of our power as a community. On Friday at noon let us all stand together and show them our communities united in struggle.

In Solidarity & In Struggle,
the students on hunger strike at UC Berkeley

Rally Friday Noon California Hall.

Jonathan Poullard's Anti-Student Union

UCMeP:

Dear UCMeP Faithful,

As we all are well aware, the University of California is currently going through a profoundly profitable rebranding process. Administrators and government officials alike are working hard and getting paid top dollar to transform our beloved university from a decrepit bastion of free speech and what Ronald Reagan once called “a hotbed of communism and homosexuality” to something a bit more upstanding.

Like insects of the Lepidoptera order that magnificently metamorphose from dull and ugly caterpillars into graceful butterflies, so too is the UC finally coming into its own by changing beyond all recognition. Once UC has made it through the growing pains of this transformation (we like to call it an “educational process”), the university will be but a shell of its former self — leaner, meaner, less diverse, with far fewer students!

In an effort to better reflect UC Berkeley’s emerging identity, the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization (UCMeP) is spearheading a direct action campaign to rename prominent campus buildings in honor of those who are most responsible for the new direction UC Berkeley is currently barreling down.

With this said, UCMeP is wasting no time. On May 5, 2010 we will change the name of UC Berkeley’s “Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union” to “Jonathan Poullard’s Anti-Student Union.” This new moniker recognizes the inspiring commitment our Dean of Students has repeatedly demonstrated to revoking the civil rights of students at UC Berkeley.

By overseeing the extra-legal prosecutions of over 100 students for their misguided activist efforts to defend public education, Mr. Poullard has gone above and beyond the call of duty (not to mention the law) to ensure that students are not guaranteed the same rights and privileges afforded to them by kangaroo courts of law like the US Supreme Court. Along with his faithful companions Susan Tregaser, Christina Gonzalez, and Jeff Woods, the ironically titled “Dean of Students” has worked tirelessly to create a second class of students on our fair campus. Moreover, Mr. Poullard never hesitates to remind us that contrary to the US Constitution, free speech is not a right but in fact a privilege that must be policed at all times and revoked when it conflicts with the interest of the property-owning minority.

Let’s be honest, figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Mario Savio, and Cesar Chavez (and the struggles for social justice and equal rights they represent) are – thankfully – a thing of the past. In their place stand a brave, new cohort of mid-level administrators dressed whose dedication to turning a blind eye to all ethical systems is nothing if not impressive. These heroes will undoubtedly be the names and faces our children and grandchildren read about in their history books.

In eager anticipation, then, we invite you to show your support for Jonathan Poullard and the metamorphosis he represents by joining us on Sproul Plaza this Wednesday, May 5 at 1:30PM for a dedication ceremony and inaugural ribbon cutting of the new “Anti-Student Union.”

We do hope you can join us to celebrate of this man’s innumerable noble accomplishments. And we encourage you to use the attached photo as your profile picture on Facebook in honor of Mr. Poullard.

Faithfully Yours,
UCMeP

UC Berkeley Faculty Association Statement on Student Judicial Process

Another statement, this time from the UC Berkeley Faculty Association, rebuking the the administration regarding both the Code of Student Conduct and its implementation:

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau, EVC Breslauer and Dean Poullard,

The Berkeley Faculty Association joins the Northern California ACLU, the Campus Rights Project, the Berkeley Faculty Petition on the Office of Student Conduct Procedures, and the UC Berkeley Divisional Council in expressing profound concern about the fairness of disciplinary proceedings against student protesters at this time. We note that several flaws in the current procedures cast doubt on the legitimacy of the charges and the hearings. They include: the failure to afford due process to students charged, the imposition of sanctions without adjudication, the failure to specify evidence necessary to ground the charges, the inadequate protection of the right to protest, and the failure of the Office of Student Conduct to follow its own procedures. We urge the cessation of all proceedings against student protesters on the basis of flawed procedure. Before any further disciplinary actions are take, we call for a re-engagement with and revision of the student code of conduct that honors rights of peaceful protest.

Sincerely,

Wendy Brown
Co-Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association

Chris Rosen
Co-Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association

Richard Walker
Vice Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association

UC Berkeley Faculty: Suspend the Code, Drop the Charges!

About 130 UC Berkeley faculty have signed a letter to Chancellor Birgeneau demanding the suspension of the Code of Student conduct as well as the cessation of charges against student protesters.

April 20, 2010 (download pdf version)

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau
Office of the Chancellor
200 California Hall #1500
Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer
200 California Hall

Office of Student Conduct
2536 Channing Way
Building E. 2nd Floor

We, the undersigned faculty, call for the immediate cessation of all proceedings against the students involved in protest actions that are currently underway by the OSC. Such proceedings should be suspended until and unless the serious procedural issues that currently mar these proceedings can be fully addressed and rectified. Because it is clear that no fair evaluation can be conducted under these circumstances, we call for the immediate halt to all disciplinary proceedings against student protestors following from the events on December 11th and November 20th of this academic year.

It has become abundantly clear in the last weeks that these proceedings are not only seriously flawed, but that no just outcome can emerge from these procedures in their current form. The problems as we see them pertain to two separate but interlocking issues: the version of the code of student conduct that is currently used and the specific applications of that code in these specific cases. These flawed applications arise from inadequacies in the code itself and from flagrant instances of bad judgment on the part of those conducting the inquiries. These egregious applications of the code have raised serious questions whether those charged with directing a fair disciplinary review have overreached their mandate and contravened both legal and educational standards to which we, as a community, are bound. The rights to political protest, guaranteed by the University’s commitment to free speech and rights of assembly are paramount in this context and must provide the framework within which charges against any of these students are assessed. We note with grave concern the lack of a sufficient effort to balance these concerns with the alleged offenses as well as the failure to develop and apply appropriate measures for assessing these charges.

Our concerns below this pertain both to clear procedural flaws in the existing code and to unjust applications in these cases:

1.) Failure to Afford Due Process: The first and most glaring procedural flaw is that UC rules regarding student conduct do not afford due process rights that comply with established legal standards. We note that (a) various courts have held that procedural protections are required in the context of administrative disciplinary proceedings and that those decisions have relevance in these cases and (b) where such disciplinary proceedings lead to the conclusion that criminal charges are warranted, or where students suffer other material deprivations, such as suspension, expulsion, or the withholding of the diploma, students clearly ought to be entitled to legal counsel who could review the evidence and present counter-argument where necessary. The Campus Rights Project, the ACLU of Northern California, and many of our own faculty and advisors in law have expressed concern about this legal failing.

2.) Impositions of Sanctions without Adjudication: We see clear evidence of unjust applications of this flawed policy. In the case of two students, Angela Miller and Zachary Bowin, sanctions were imposed prior to the convening of any formal disciplinary review, and thus to any determination of culpability. In such cases, due process procedures were fully abandoned with unjust consequences. Although the OSC has described these measures as interim restraints, they are, in fact, the equivalent of non-adjudicated punishment.

3.) No Specification of the Evidence Necessary to Ground Charges: A second procedural flaw, clearly the result of the failure to afford due process protection, is highlighted by the clear miscarriage of justice committed in these two cases: for example, the code does not adequately specify the kinds of evidence and the means of cross-examination on the basis of which any charge may be articulated or adjudicated. Nor does it allow for an advisor to have a meaningful role at the time of hearing. As a result, allegations that certain students are a “threat” to campus life or have engaged in “physical abuse” seriously impugn the reputation of students, and this is especially alarming that the students were given no evidence at the time to support the allegation, and given no opportunity to present counter-evidence or to consult legal experts. Indeed, at no time has a clear evidentiary basis been made available for the allegations against these students. As we all know, such allegations have long-term effects on the capacity of students to finish their education and to gain employment. As a result, such allegations should either be corroborated by standard processes of evidentiary review and disputation, or dropped altogether. As it stands, there is no basis in evidence for these charges, and the rights of students have been fully suspended or denied.

Indeed, no legally acceptable standard of evidence has been established in the OSC adjudication of these cases. The accusation and the punishment seem to come at the same time (recalling the worst scenarios from Kafka). We call upon the OSC to develop standards that would comply with existing legal standards demanding a preponderance of evidence as well as clear and convincing grounds for any further disciplinary actions. We deplore allegations that presume guilt by association, or which single out political viewpoints as grounds for sanctions (recalling the worst scenarios from McCarthyism).

4.) Inadequate Protection of the Right to Protest: No explanation of the Student Code of Conduct was made public and available to students in advance of the protest actions of November 20th or December 11th. On December 11th, the students were clearly protesting with the explicit understanding that they had the permission from the University to express their views publicly in a protest action. If and when that permission was rescinded, it should have been directly communicated to those participating in the protest actions. The failure to communicate policy and the retractable conditions of permission in this instance foregrounds the need for structured and stable lines of communication between administration and students on such matters. It also calls attention to the arbitrary power of the administration to grant rights of protest and to withdraw them when these rights should be more securely and consistently protected by the clearly communicated policies of the university. Indeed, the tradition of civil disobedience belongs squarely to both traditions of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Since students had reason to assume that they were operating under an administrative ratification of those very rights, they had no intention to trespass, but understood themselves as exercising rights of protest fundamental to free speech at the university.

5.) Failure by OSC to Follow its Own Procedures: We call attention to the fact that the OSC neither honors its own timelines nor holds itself accountable to its own procedures, which implies that certain rogue judgments, preemptive punishments, and “rehabilitative” methods are being pursued without any warrant in university code or existing law. We deplore the practice of preemptive punishment that works through a sham “ educational” model, as is evident in the recent settlement offers that couple suspension with an “essay assignment” that requires students to perform a political self-criticism, indeed, to take a prescribed political point of view, such as the appropriate limits of the freedoms guaranteed to journalists (as was done to Josh Wolf, the journalist who covered the Wheeler Hall events from within the building and with the explicit approval of his dean). This disciplinary action not only makes use of a fully discredited educational model (one that is better described as “inculcation” and does not even reserve that respect for diverse viewpoints that defines the fundament of liberal education) that we, as educators, find fully deplorable and would never accept as part of any educational institution worth the name. As a result, any finding on the basis of such a flawed conduct should be invalidated, and would be invalidated in the course of any legal review. We ask that the administration cease these practices immediately.

Hence, because the disciplinary procedures have proven to be pervasively flawed for all the reasons cited above, we call for the suspension of all charges against the student protesting on December 11th as well as those protesting on November 20th. In addition, we ask that the Student Code of Conduct be revised with the participation of educators and legal advisors to bring the code into conformity with legal standards of due process for students, and establish clear and legitimate evidentiary bases for any allegations. These rights are severely compromised by the procedural flaws and evidence of overreach and misconduct on the part of those conducting the reviews. We maintain that the current disciplinary procedures are so badly flawed that they should be abandoned at this time. Because no sanctions should be imposed until a review has been successfully concluded on the basis of a just application of legally sound policy, and we have neither a sound policy nor a just application at this time, we call for the cessation of all disciplinary proceedings. Of utmost importance to any such policy revision will be the commitment of the university to rights of free speech, which include rights to peaceful protest. If these rights are arbitrarily suspended or abandoned without reflection or if they are restricted without clear justification and communication, we will have dishonored the tradition of free and open expression that has distinguished this campus for decades. Let us not accept a situation where arbitrary power makes a mockery of those fundamental and enduring rights that we are surely bound to honor and protect.

Signatures below the fold.

UCB Law Students & Attorneys Issue Demand Letter

Last Tuesday, UC Berkeley law students from the Campus Rights Project held a press conference in which they delivered a demand letter (PDF here) drafted by the law office of Siegel and Yee. Building on the public letter sent by the ACLU of Northern California last week, the demand letter details the numerous ways in which the UCB Code of Student Conduct fails to meet the constitutional requirements for due process. It concludes by noting: "If you fail to respond [to each of the alleged constitutional violations] or respond with a negative, we will be forced to vigorously and fully investigate each client's legal options so that they can fully exercise their rights." In other words, there's a lawsuit a-comin'...

This is the text of the press release issued upon delivering the letter:

On Tuesday April 13, 2010, following months of pressing the University to respect the rights of students and adhere to its own policies, the Campus Rights Project issued a letter from partnering attorneys to the Office of Student Conduct on behalf the students facing charges. The letter called for the dismissal of charges, or for the timely resolution of the charges in accordance with students’ constitutional and statutory rights. Should the University fail to respond, the letter states that the attorneys will be “forced to vigorously and fully investigate each client’s legal options so that they can fully exercise their rights.”

In response to the University of California, Berkeley Administration's initiation of disciplinary charges against student activists who participated in the demonstrations during Fall semester 2009, UC Berkeley law students established the Campus Rights Project, an initiative aimed to ensure that the Administration respects students’ due process rights in Student Conduct proceedings. Since the beginning of 2010, over a dozen UC Berkeley law students have been advising over 65 UC Berkeley students in Office of Student Conduct proceedings under the supervision of law faculty and local practitioners, including a number of Berkeley Law alumni.

UC Berkeley’s rules accord students some due process rights but fall short of what is required by law. Campus Rights Project has observed numerous violations of students’ constitutional rights, as well as those guaranteed by state and federal law, and the University’s own Student Code of Conduct. Violations include inadequate notice of charges, as well as a complete absence of specific facts or evidence in support of the charges. Carmen Comsti, a first-year law student with the Campus Rights Project, stated that “UCB Administration is abusing the disciplinary process, which undermines student, worker, and faculty resistance to layoffs, furloughs, service cut-backs, and fee hikes. They are clamping down on student activism by retaliating against students fighting for quality public education in order to create fear and inhibit political speech by students.”

Since the protests on campus last semester, the University has suspended its timeline for resolving charges against students, leaving many students waiting for answers. In a letter issued to the University last week, the ACLU of Northern California outlined its serious concerns with the UCB Student Code of Conduct and the violations of students’ due process rights throughout the disciplinary process. The letter concludes that "the University has not met constitutional standards for due process of law in its disciplinary proceedings."

UCB Administration has also denied students access to counsel in disciplinary hearings. While the University has no obligation to provide representation, courts have held that universities are required to allow students to independently retain counsel for conduct hearings. Contrary to these judicial rulings, the University maintains that under the Code of Student Conduct a student's representative is only permitted to speak only at the discretion of the hearing panel and has gone as far as to exclude attorneys from the process. “As future attorneys who believe that the right to counsel is a fundamental protection against state power, and thus a bulwark of democratic freedom, we are especially concerned with how a prohibition on lawyer representation implicates the basic fairness of any Student Conduct proceeding,” said Kiva Schrager, a first-year law student with the Campus Rights Project.

In the case of two students, Angela Miller and Zachary Bowin, the office issued a sanction of interim suspension, prohibiting them from entering any part of the Berkeley campus, and from “any and all contact, ant any time, for any reason, and/or by any manner…with any faculty, staff or students.” The University imposed these sanctions before either student had a formal hearing, causing them o miss their final exams. In the case of Ms. Miller, the University attempted to evict her from her Berkeley Student Cooperative apartment. According to Daniela Urban, Campus Rights Project member and first-year law student, “perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the panel’s decision was the utter lack of evidence it cited to support the only charge at issue: whether Ms. Miller is a threat to the health and safety of the campus community.”

Despite the concerns that have been raised regarding both the content of University’s Student Code of Conduct, as well as its application, the Office of Student Conduct continues to levy unprecedented sanctions against students.

UC Administration Response to ACLU

From the Chronicle:

The interim suspensions are "remarkable examples of an abuse of University authority," wrote ACLU attorney Julia Harumi Mass to Birgeneau and Chris Kutz, chair of the Academic Senate.

[Mike] Smith, the campus counsel, would not comment on students' cases. But he said he agrees with several points made by the ACLU.

"I think we need to fine-tune the interim suspension part of the process, and we're doing that," he said. "We've already modified the gag orders" that bar students from talking with university-affiliated people, but he declined to say how it had changed.

Smith said he disagrees with the ACLU that attorneys should be allowed to participate in disciplinary hearings. Nor does he think that people sitting on disciplinary panels should receive training in due process, as the ACLU recommends.

"Where we need to be making changes," he said, "we'll make them."

Abolish the Code of Student Conduct

A work in progress, from the folks at uncivpro: "The Urgent Necessity of the Abolition of the University’s Regulation of Student Political Activity."

In Fall 2009, direct-action resistance to the UC Regents’ project of privatizing the University of California (“UC”) erupted systemwide. In response, the UC Administration is now punishing students on a mass scale for violating various provisions of the Code of Student Conduct.

Almost invariably, an alleged violation of the criminal law -- which, of course, exists independently of the Code of Student Conduct -- underlies the student conduct charges resulting from the demonstrations and actions in Fall 2009; almost invariably, the UC Administration commenced its student conduct charges against students after receiving a UC Police Department (UCPD) report detailing the student’s alleged violation of a particular law. Thus, students who engage in civil disobedience face significant repercussions from two independent State entities.

First, and most obviously, students confront the State and the possibility of State repression. It suffices to briefly mention that civil disobedience often results in suffering physical harm at the hands of law enforcement (i.e., police brutality), arrest, stints in jail, and citations for violations of the criminal law. The District Attorney can press charges against the students; the prospect of punitive fines and/or prison is real. Second, and less obviously, the University may sanction students for the same activity that the criminal law governs; that is, the University may impose additional punishments on students for their acts of civil disobedience.

A small group of law students working with National Lawyers Guild attorneys have closely monitored and defended students in these University disciplinary proceedings. Such scrutiny from a legal perspective has revealed administrators’ improper application of the University’s disciplinary process in addition to systemic abuses of students’ due process rights guaranteed under both the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and students’ contracts with the UC.

The purpose of this piece, however, is not to detail the UC Administration’s various and numerous violations of students’ legal rights. Instead, this piece generally seeks to contribute another opinion to the ongoing discussion of the student disciplinary process at the University. In addition, this article broadly aspires (with attendant modesty) to lay the groundwork for an anti-authoritarian critique of the student disciplinary process. This critique suggests an ultimate solution to the problems posed by the University’s use of its disciplinary process to sanction students for acts of civil disobedience: abolition of the student disciplinary process.

This solution may appear impractical, perhaps utopian, and too long term of a project to have any immediate relevance to the defense of students facing disciplinary charges. Undoubtedly, students facing disciplinary charges need immediate relief, and such long-term plans offer those already subjected to the student disciplinary process little assistance. This piece assumes that the most important objective for any defense-related project is to get the OSC off charged students’ backs. But it is our hope that this critique of the OSC will inform concerned parties as they move forward and formulate strategies to resist the Administration’s draconian effort to neutralize the most active elements in the Student Movement.

As a pragmatic first step, this piece argues for the abolition of the University’s authority to sanction students for conduct that the criminal law governs. Abolition of the University’s authority to sanction students for conduct that the criminal law governs is necessary, at the very least, to ensure that students can operate politically with as least restraint possible within the University context. Otherwise, the University can wield its power to deprive students of their education in order to coerce students to eschew direct-action resistance. Thus, there is an urgency to the abolition of the University’s power to sanction students for activity governed by the criminal law.

ACLU Slams UC Berkeley Student Conduct Process [Updated]

Read the whole report here. Here's the introduction:

It has come to the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California that the University of California, Berkeley ("University") has imposed extremely restrictive suspensions on students without meeting the requirements of constitutional due process and in violation of constitutional guarantees of privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. The University of California has a historic reputation as a seat for dynamic student protest which inspires social change; it is therefore likely that more students will face disciplinary hearings in the future. We write to detail the ways in which the University's disciplinary process has gone wrong, to set forth the ACLU's recommendations for improvement, and to urge the University to take steps to ensure that due process and fair treatment are honored in future disciplinary actions.

[Update]: The original link is broken. Here's a new one.

On Tolerance

Here's David Theo Goldberg on racism at the UCs -- and the UC administration's response:

University of California administrators seem to have gathered around a singular verbal response to the variety of “incidents” that has rocked UC campuses in the past month or so. All such incidents, they say, are expressions of “intolerance and incivility.” President Yudof has issued a statement insisting that “It is also important that members of the university community conduct themselves with civility and with tolerance for the diverse groups that make up our campuses.” Chair of the Board of Regents, Russell Gould, reiterates the sentiment: “The University of California's commitment to diversity and tolerance for differing points of view is one of the hallmarks of its character.” To paraphrase Gandhi, robust diversity would indeed be a good thing.