ROBERT PRICE: UC Davis' stunning Occupy recruitment video
| Monday, Nov 21 2011 10:00 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Nov 22 2011 12:59 PM
My daughter Jill was sitting in her Spanish class at UC Davis about two weeks ago when a small group of protesters decided to vent their feelings outside of her classroom. They banged on the door and shouted "This is our university!" Jill, one of perhaps 30 freshmen from Bakersfield who attend the school, was mildly annoyed by the interruption, but her professor was livid. She burst through the door and shook her fist in the direction of the mini-mob, which had continued to move down the row of classrooms, banging on metal doors as they went. "It's my university, too!" the professor shouted. Jill phoned home that night to provide her parents with a general update, and she mentioned the door-banging interruption. "They're complaining to the wrong people," she said. I don't know how many new recruits the Occupy UC Davis movement won that day, but there probably weren't any in Jill's Spanish class.
She was walking through the middle of campus last Friday when university police officers dismantled the last remnants of an Occupy encampment in the central quad. The unauthorized tents were gone, but a circle of linked-arm students remained, sitting crossed-legged and silent in their parkas and knit caps. Then came the moment that seems destined to endure as one of the iconic images of the Occupy movement: Lt. John Pike of the UC Davis Police Department stepped over the row of seated students into the middle of their circle and, with a theatrical flourish, produced an industrial-sized can of pepper spray. Then he moved down the line, firing an orange plume directly into their faces like a housewife wiping out ants marching along the kitchen floor.
When I first heard there'd been some kind of trouble, but before I learned details or saw any video, I actually texted this to Jill: "Bummer. Generally speaking that kind of thing is tough for cops too." I was thinking of my uncle, who was a university police officer at UC Berkeley in the late '60s and took a brick to the knee that essentially disabled him for life. But then I saw the infuriating video.
"Told you," Jill texted back. "I am outraged."
Students all over campus were angered. Jill's apolitical, "Gossip Girl"-loving roomie, the daughter of a family of Northern California growers, couldn't believe such a thing was even possible.
And, just like that, Lt. Pike boosted the Occupy movement's recruitment efforts like nothing the most resourceful marketing expert could ever have conceived.
UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza declared that her officers had felt threatened because they were surrounded. The videos (and there are many) render that argument laughable: Thick-necked, helmeted officers stepped freely in and out of the circle of students, several of whom clearly appeared anxious. At one point in the aftermath, Spicuzza said she was trying to get the names of the officers (there were two) who had wielded pepper spray. If the police chief doesn't know who carried out the assault, then who was in charge of it? She has since been placed on administrative leave.
Next question: Where was UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi when all of this was developing? She is "extremely saddened" and has formed the obligatory task force to investigate, but the incident represents a galling failure of leadership. Occupy protests have gripped the U.S. for months, and college campuses across the country, including UC Davis itself, have been dealing with demonstrations focused on skyrocketing tuition since at least August. Couldn't Katehi, weeks ago, have convened a committee of administrators, faculty, police and student leaders to agree on response protocols? That she and others seemed unprepared and surprised is almost beyond belief. Was Lt. Pike the only guy with a plan?
I had the opportunity to have breakfast with Katehi and three of her colleagues last April, when I was still trying to figure out where to send my kid for college. She projected an air of confidence and competence, and she had a clear idea of the role her university will play in California's economic recovery. I wasn't looking for maternal instinct -- she's the chief executive of an institution that serves 32,000 people -- but I sensed that, were I to actually delegate certain parental responsibilities to her university, her university would eventually hand my child back to me reasonably intact. My confidence just went up in a cloud of orange smoke.
Nearly 5,000 students rallied Monday to protest Friday's events and renew their outrage over the California Legislature's abdication of its commitment to higher education. Jill, between classes, watched the speeches for almost an hour. She reported no acrid odor. Three days after the video shown round the world, that qualifies as progress.
Email Editorial Page Editor Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com.
