I get the feeling that many believe that as the Chancellor ordered the police on to the quad, she should resign irrespective as to what specific instructions the police were given. Others may feel that the nature of her instructions might be a critical element in assigning guilt.
I'm hopeful that the ongoing investigations will answer the following questions, all of which may influence people's perception of the Chancellors role in these events. Ideally these questions will be answered with verifiable evidence which doesn't rest on the sole testimony of any one individual. I.e. it is not enough for the Chancellor simply to say that she instructed the police not to use force, there must – somewhere – be evidence to corroborate this.
Unanswered questions
Did the Chancellor act alone in ordering the police on to the quad?
If not, then who else advised her and what advice did they give?
Did she receive any advice to not send in police?
At the time that any order was given what information did the Chancellor (and advisors) have about the state of events on the quad (number of tents and/or protestors)?
What were the specific instructions to Police Chief Spicuzza regarding the removal of students and/or tents?
Did the Chancellor know that the police had, and were liable to use, pepper spray?
Was the Chancellor aware of the UC Police Department's guidelines on using force?
What specific instructions did Police Chief Spicuzza give to her officers?
What specific instructions were given to Lt. Pike – and to the second (as yet unamed) police officer who also used pepper spray?
Lt. Pike can be seen in some videos giving and receiving instructions via his radio mic. What were those instructions?
After finding out about what happened on Friday afternoon, what was the Chancellors immediate response before her first email to the campus community that was sent late on Friday?
Was the Chancellor solely responsible for this first email (i.e. did she draft it or just approve it)?
Did she receive any advice not to send the email, or to change the text?
When this email was sent, what information had the Chancellor received about the events of that afternoon?
I think questions 3, 6, and 7 are the most pertinent, but I also think that the initial email which was sent did a lot to make the whole situation even worse.
Please feel free to suggest other unanswered questions in the comments. Alternatively, if you know of answers to any of them, please let me know (citing evidence rather than just opinion) and I'll update the blog post.
Update 1: 11/30 - It seems that a majority of the Graduate Student Association have also called for the Chancellor not to resign
One of the demands of the Occupy UC Davis movement appears to include a demand to remove all police from the UC Davis campus. Consider the following map which shows most of the UC Davis campus and some of the wider city of Davis.
Location 'A' is the current home of the City of Davis Police Department. Location 'B' is the home of the UC Davis Police Department. If people don't want cops on campus, would they want them 'next to' campus, or do they want them to come from the City of Davis Police Department which is a 10 minute drive across town?
I think the issue of whether police should carry arms at all times, and the much more significant issue over the involvement of police during peaceful protests, are completely separate from whether we should even have police on campuses at all.
This was a powerful speech from one of the pepper spray victims who described what happened when the riot police came on to the campus last Friday (18th November 2011).
There are some estimates that there were maybe 5,000 people on the UC Davis Quad today. I was there from about 10:30 and tried – as best I could – to provide some coverage of events via my twitter account.
When I arrived, there was hardly anyone there at all. Apart from the news crews you wouldn't notice anything to make you think that one of the largest gatherings in UC Davis history was about to take place. The speeches began at 12:00 and were led off by many vicitims of the pepper spray. These speeches were all articulate, powerful, and moving...a credit to UC Davis.
After several speeches the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, spoke briefly. She was emotional and started out by apologizing for the events of the previous Friday. Here are a few photos from the day. I am glad that I was there and was extremely happy to be part of such a large, peaceful, gathering.
A short while after this, the Chancellor addressed everyone with a short speech, her voice quivering at times. She started out with a direct apology, this video only shows the second part of her speech.
I was at last work last Friday and was very curious as to what would happen as the hours counted down to the 3:00 pm deadline; the time by which protestors had been asked to remove the tents from the UC Davis Quad.
I was tempted to go along to see what would unfold, but opted to stay at work. Physical separation, however, is no real barrier to being present at events these days. As the UC Davis police moved on to the Quad, there was semi-live coverage through the twitter accounts of Justin Cox (@DavisCAPatch), the Davis Enterprise (and @Cory_Golden in particular), and The California Aggie (@CaliforniaAggie). The former twitter account offered a link to a live video stream. I was able to listen to this but couldn't get a stable enough stream to watch. Here are some notable tweets that occurred on Friday afternoon, all of which I retweeted :
There were many more tweets about the events of that afternoon, but for a while things seemed to quieten down. At about 6:30 pm I cycled past the Quad and was surprised by how empty and quiet it was. I stayed in town to meet some friends for a little while but was home by 9:30 pm or so. That's when things started to take off. It became clear that this story was gaining traction and I tweeted as much:
The Chancellor had sent her first email to the UC Davis community about 9:00 and I posted a copy on my blog for others to read. Over the course of Friday evening, the now infamous photos and videos of the pepper spraying started to go viral. At just after midnight I noticed that 'UC Davis' was a worldwide trending topic on twitter.
I had also been checking Google News to see who was picking up the story. On Saturday night there were only a handful (maybe <15) of news sources that were covering the story, and these were nearly all local (Californian). As soon as I woke on Saturday morning I checked again and by about 8:15 am, the number had risen to 40. By 10:30 am, that number had risen to 205.
I think it was about this time, that the videos of the pepper spraying incident really started to go viral. I didn't check too many more times during the day but by Sunday morning there was over 1,200 Google News items about it.
At this time it was now a fully-fledged International news item, with coverage from the likes of the BBC and Al Jazeera. At the time of writing this blog post (Sunday evening), the story is still on the front page of the BBC News website and Google News has almost 7,000 stories about the incident (and about the wider implications of what has happened).
It's been a little bit surreal to be living and working somewhere which has become the center of such a big story. I hope that people who had never heard about UC Davis before this weekend don't just remember the images of the police with the pepper spray, but rather that they remember the peaceful and non-violent nature of the protest. I also hope that everyone has watched the amazing scenes when Chancellor Katehi left the disrupted press conference on Saturday to walk to her car, and was met by an eerie quiet from hundreds of gathered protestors. Never has two minutes of absolute silence sounded so loud.
I love UC Davis and while I'm saddened by what has happened, I'm profoundly proud of the behavior of the protestors throughout. I hope that lessons are learned from the events of the last few days and that peaceful, non-violent protest will remain a viable option to all of those at UC Davis who want to have their voices heard.
Was so amazed by the glorious colors of tonight's sunset in Davis. Felt lucky to have my camera on me, but sad that I wasn't in a better place to capture a good shot of the horizon. Here are three pics which capture just a little bit of how magical tonight's sunset was:
I spied these two cows on the UC Davis campus as I was cycling home tonight. They were far away from the rest from the herd and initially they seemed to be intently staring at each other. Then they locked heads and...well, and nothing really. No signs of aggression and at times one of them gave a little licking to the other cow. Strange behavior, but made for some nice shots. Photos taken with my Nexus One phone.
A photo of the 'protest art installation' which is currently on the UC Davis quad. I'm not sure who is behind this but it appears linked to the recent Mrak Hall protest which led to the arrest of some students.
