UC Davis Students Demand Resignation of Chancellor Katehi

David Buscho was sitting peacefully on a sidewalk, linking arms with other students in protest at the University of California at Davis. The disturbing video shows a campus police officer in riot gear calmly walk up to the students on the ground and attack them with pepper spray at point-blank range.

Occupy protests at other campuses have gone on peacefully, but UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi allowed her campus police to ruthlessly attack students who were sitting silently on the sidewalk.

UC Davis professor Nathan Brown gave a chilling account of what happened to David and other students:

"When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats," "Several of these students were hospitalized."

Now David is leading a campaign on Change.org demanding that Chancellor Katehi resign from the school for allowing her students to be attacked by campus police during a peaceful protest.

David has been active in his city's protests as part of the national Occupy Wall Street movement. This month he and other students started an occupation of their campus, specifically protesting an 81% increase in tuition costs and rising student loan debts.

Lt. John Pike - UnAmerican

But just 10 days into their occupation, UC Davis police unleashed an attack on their own students.

"Chancellor Katehi authorized excessive police force on students exercising their right to free speech on our own campus" - David Buscho

The UC Davis community won't stand for it. In just 24 hours, more than 40,000 people have joined David's campaign calling on UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to resign, including the Davis Faculty Association and thousands more from the campus community. Rather than consider resigning, Chancellor Katehi tried to downplay the event, merely asking a task force to prepare a report within 90 days.

Now Chancellor Katehi is under huge pressure to step down for this attack, and your signature will help tip the scales. Please sign David's petition asking UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to step down for pepper-spraying her own students.

What People Are Saying

Nathan Vazquez ... "I am a United States Marine Corps. Infantry veteran and a student at UC Davis. The brutality of the police was cowardly, unAmerican and completely antithetical to my beloved Constitution."

Nick Valvo ... "I teach those students: not those ones, necessarily, but their classmates at UC Davis. I am fiercely proud of them, and will not tolerate Chancellor Katehi's callous lack of concern for their safety. She has overstepped her authority as Chancellor and has lost all legitimacy with this action."

Nitza Medina ..."Chancellor Katehi's decision to use force against the UC Davis students in such a manner is outrageous. As an alum of UCD I am shocked to see UCD not allowing its students freedom of speech, including setting up tents on campus. I have participated in protests on campus in 1995, where we camped at Mrak Hall for weeks and the then Chancellor Vanderhoef did not resort to mace to remove protestors. If fact we joked with police. We were able to camp and gather signatures for petitions. Chancellor Katehi needs to learn of the history of protest on campus and allow students to express their freedom of speech."

Diana Pei Wu ... "Pepper spray is banned for use in war by Article I.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention which bans the use of all riot control agents in warfare whether lethal or less-than-lethal. I demand that Police Officer Lt. John Pike be terminated immediately and that he be permanently barred from employment on all UC and CSU campuses for the rest of his life."

Shelly Alcorn, CAE ..."I support peaceful protest. My daughter attends UC Davis and I am outraged for not only her, but all students and other protesters who have been victims of police violence. This is supposed to be the United States."

Why This Is Important

Join University of California at Davis Assistant Professor Nathan Brown in calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi for her failure to protect UC Davis student's First Amendment right to assemble, or even their physical safety.

Nathan Brown's Open Letter To The Chancellor is below:

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation 

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.”

You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis:

1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? 

Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Program in Critical Theory

University of California at Davis

Face it folks, your freedoms and liberties have been taken away.  America is no longer.

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