HUB THE
EXTRA November 28, 2011
Davis Senior High School
For cont in coverag uing e of the Occupy UC and more D protests , visit w ww. bluedev ilhub.co m
Volume 86, Issue 4½
www.bluedevilhub.com
‘The whole world is watching . . .’ — Occupy UCD protesters
ANDERS YOUNG/HUB PHOTO
Thousands of students gathered in the UCD quad at noon on Nov. 21 for a peaceful general assembly meeting. The assembly passed a proposal by 99.5 percent to call a strike on Nov. 28 during the UC regents meeting.
By Lauren Blackwell & Chloe Kim HUB Website Editor & Editor-in-Chief A group of seated UC Davis protesters were pepper sprayed by two campus police officers on Nov. 18 after they refused to evacuate the UCD Quad after several administrative requests. Is this a violation of the First Amendment, one of the oldest tenets of American law? According to UCD law professor Alan Brownstein, a nationally recognized constitutional law scholar, the issue could be argued both ways in court. “On [Nov. 18], there’s really two actions that occurred: taking down the tents and pepper spraying,” Brownstein said. “Our issue is whether what the protesters were doing is speech or not.” Brownstein stated that people often only understand speech as talking, but actions
can also be construed as symbolic speech. In addition, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, “when student protesters occupy buildings or disrupt classes and events, their actions may be punished through the criminal courts […] and through the university’s disciplinary system, if university rules are broken.” Brownstein thinks that there are three arguments that the state could make against the protesters. First, free speech does not allow protesters to obstruct walkways or entrances. “[The state] could say, ‘You were blocking the walkway,’” Brownstein said. “The students could say, ‘We weren’t really blocking the walkway. You could walk around us.’” Brownstein made a second point: protesters can not physically obstruct policemen from performing their duties. Third, he said that certain rules can be legally applied to parks and other public places where people might want to
JUSTIN COX/PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW.DAVISPATCH.COM
ANDERS YOUNG/HUB PHOTO
Students protested against police brutality on Nov. 19 and called for Chancellor Linda Katehi’s resignation. Katehi and UCD police chief Annette Spicuzza addressed the press at 4 p.m. at the Surge II building. At 6:48 p.m., Katehi left the building as the students sat in silent protest.
Were First Amendment rights violated at the UCD protests last week?
The image of Lt. John Pike pepper spraying about a dozen UC Davis student protesters Nov. 18 on the UCD quad went viral on the Internet as a meme, edited into photos and famous works of art to create satirical statements.
express themselves. Those rules are called “Time, Place, and Manner Rules.” According to the law professor, these rules are important and practical.“If time, place and manner rules are valid and you violate them, First Amendment rights do not apply,” he said. However, Brownstein states that “if the government wants to interfere, it’s got to justify its action.” The UCD law profes-
sor notes that the UCD quad is like a big park, so the right to peacefully assemble is upheld because it is public forum. In an open letter to UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi and Professor Linda Bisson, the chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, Brownstein joined the rest of the law school faculty in insisting that “the University must respect the students’ right to peacefully
protest on the public issues of the day, including especially the right to protest university policies.” The faculty members believe that the University should exercise the authority it has to regulate the manner and form of speech with great care. “On a University campus, as elsewhere, both the police and the students deserve to be treated with respect,” they said.
Why students are protesting Professors see history in UCD protests By Henry Anker & Gary Djajapranata
UC DAVIS ALUMNI: UP TO THREE YEARS AFTER GRADUATION Employed full-time:
57%
Enrolled in postgraduate program:
38%
Emp
loyed fu
64% 37%
Source: UC Davis Student Affairs Research and Information
ll-tim
Enro pro lled in gram pos tgra : d
e:
uate
Employed ful
l-time:
52%
ANDERS YOUNG/HUB PHOTO
Katehi held a town hall meeting on Nov. 22. More than 700 students and adults attended the meeting. Katehi announced that all charges against students who had been arrested Nov. 18 would be dropped and that medical expenses for those pepper sprayed would be refunded. A box with 80,000 signatures calling for Katehi’s resignation was also presented.
Enrolled in postgra duate program:
37%
2002
2008
2005
UNDERGRADUATE TUITION FEES AT UC DAVIS FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS
PETER LIN/HUB PHOTO
$15,123
15
UCD Occupy students began rebuilding their encampment on the UCD Quad Nov. 21. The community is run by committees that handle food, first aid, communications and logistics. A Thanksgiving meal took place at 2 p.m on Nov. 24.
14.5 14 13.5 $13,080
13
By Anna sturla HUB Staff Writer American protest movements have brought us vivid images of violence, struggle and change. Americans have seen dogs set on unarmed black marchers, soldiers teargassing veterans demanding their benefits and National Guard members shooting at anti-war protesters at an Ohio university. To this long gallery of American protest, there is now one more image: students on a California campus, sitting on the ground, arms linked, a police officer calmly blasting them with pepper spray. “I think the images are chilling. The callousness of the police officer — his apparent total lack of empathy — is horrifying,” UC Davis history professor Kathy Olmsted said. “Throughout U.S. history, police have responded violently to non-violent protest,” Olmsted added. “Sometimes the images of this police violence are shocking.” Protests are nothing new to American politics, particularly
at those university campuses. But university protests, including those at UCD, have moved toward defending public access to higher education in the face of potentially prohibitive increases in the cost of tuition. “The other demonstrations that we talk about at American universities, Berkeley [in] 1964 [over the right to form political groups on campus] and [antiwar protests in] Columbia in 1968, those were about university involvement in Vietnam,” UCD history professor Louis Warren said. “They weren’t about trying to preserve public education, which is what this protest is about, at its heart […] this one’s trying to protect the funding for the university itself.” The reactions of UCD campus police to protesters have also conjured comparisons to other incidents of alleged police brutality. “On a much larger scale, I would compare [the incident of UCD police pepper-spraying student protesters] to the police attacks on onlookers [to protests] in Chicago in 1968,”
Warren said. “The judgment of many who observed these events was that the police rioted. That police action on the quad was an assault. I can’t think of another way to put it.” “The images of police officers attacking non-violent protesters can mobilize many thousands more supporters for the movement,” Olmsted said. Despite long-standing conflicts between law enforcement and protesters, changes have occurred in the reactions of police to protesters. Warren described his observations of police interacting with peaceful protesters as more amiable in the past. According to Warren, police would tell protesters they were about to be arrested, and if they chose to cooperate, they would walk to the police van, and if not, they were carried. “This was all a pretty standard routine, that [has] collapsed in recent years, and I don’t know why,” Warren said. “There’s something about police reaction to protesters [today] that has become militarized and violent.”
12.5 ($1,000)
12 11.5
Boo ks bat not ons
11 $10,990
10.5
Say
it spr , don’ t ay it
We told you we’d be back
Nerds for nonviolence
10 PETER LIN/HUB PHOTO
A general strike has been called for all UC campuses today. A UC regents meeting will also be held on four UC campuses, including UCD.
By Kelly goss Editor-in-Chief
9.5
$9,497
9 $8,925
20072008
20082009
20092010
20102011
20112012
Source: UC Davis Budget & Institutional Analysis division
Signs seen at the Nov. 21 General Assembly
We pa you id for r 180 rais K e KAYLA MCCARTY/HUB GRAPHIC
AGGIE TV/COURTESY PHOTO
On Nov. 18, UC Davis police officers pepper sprayed Occupy UCD protesters. A video of Lt. John Pike pepper spraying the protesters was posted on YouTube and quickly went viral.