Many of you will be familiar with a bill that recently made it through the California state legislature: SB 259, which would allow graduate student researchers (GSRs) at public universities to unionize. It passed the state senate on August 23 and has been sent to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown for a signature. Living up to all of our expectations, the UC administration -- like many other universities across the country -- has come out in public opposition to the bill, urging Brown not to sign it. A number of predictably managerial arguments have been enlisted, such as the fact that this could cost the UC $10-18 million a year, as UC spokesperson Dianne Klein put it, without yielding "significant benefit." It goes without saying that the university's 14,000 GSRs might see things somewhat differently. Notably, the UC Berkeley Faculty Association has also come out in support of the bill, deftly critiquing the administration's arguments and "affirm[ing] the right of all employees to organize and . . . the importance of Graduate Student Researchers helping to shape the contract stipulating conditions of their work." [Update: the Council of UC Faculty Associations has written a letter as well.]

For obvious reasons, the UC administration doesn't want any push back from its faculty. This is because the faculty play a key role in the administration's media strategy to defeat SB 259, according to which it's not really a question of profitability but rather one of maintaining the pleasant relationship between GSRs and the professors they work for: "extending collective bargaining rights to graduate student researchers would change the relationship between these students and their professors from an academic mentee/mentor relationship to a professional employee/employer relationship."

It appears that the administration is doubling down. What follows is an email sent yesterday by Jeff Gibeling, the Dean of Graduate Studies at UC Davis, to the Academic Senate. In it, he lays out the UC administration's case against SB 259 and "suggests" that faculty members write to the governor to voice their opposition. He also attached a document containing the administration's talking points as well as a letter from UC president Mark Yudof to Brown. Toward the end of the email, almost as an afterthought, comes the following line: "you are, of course free to express that position as well - notwithstanding that it is different from the official UC position." Of course, this brings up a series of questions about whether recommending and facilitating your employees taking a specific position of a piece of public legislation is legal, and what constitutes implicit coercion. At the very least, it reveals just how desperate the administration is.

From: "Gibeling, Jeffery"
Subject: Legislation Affecting Graduate Student Researchers
Date: September 7, 2012 11:05:42 AM PDT
To: "academic-senate@ucdavis.edu"

Dear Academic Senate Colleagues

In the past, the Public Employment Relations Board has interpreted state law in such a way that Graduate Student Researchers were deemed to be students rather than employees, hence ineligible to be represented under a collective bargaining agreement. Recently, legislation that would extend collective bargaining rights to GSRs (SB 259) has moved through the legislative process. It has passed through the State Senate and the State Assembly and has been forwarded to Governor Brown. He has 12 days from last Wednesday to act on the legislation (sign or veto). The text of the bill is available at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB259&search_keywords=).

The University administration has officially taken a stand in opposition to the bill as described in the attached talking points and letter from President Yudof to the Governor. Last year, the systemwide Academic Senate also took a position to oppose this bill (http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/AcademicSenPositiononSB259_REVISED_050411.pdf).

Some of the concerns are that under a collective bargaining agreement, compensation for GSR’s could be forced to be the same across all disciplines and all campuses. This change would impact our ability to offer competitive stipends that vary by discipline. A collective bargaining agreement might potentially result in fewer UC graduate researchers being hired due to the additional requirements that will likely be imposed as part of a union contract. Moreover, a union contract may seek limits on working hours during a given period, preventing well-intentioned graduate students from pursuing their research and degree objectives as they see fit. The costs associated with implementing the collective bargaining process will also draw away from UC campuses some resources that could otherwise be devoted to providing direct services to students. While I agree that the cost and workload issues are important, my greatest concern is the potentially damaging effect that this change in relationship between graduate students and their faculty mentors may have on our graduate students and our programs.

I anticipate that some faculty will have concerns about this legislation. If you wish to express your opposition, you may want to visit the website:
http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/uc4ca/home/opposeSB259 and consider sending an email or making a phone call to Governor Jerry Brown and asking him to veto SB 259. I also recognize that some faculty colleagues may support this legislation, and you are, of course free to express that position as well - notwithstanding that it is different from the official UC position. Following is the contact information for the Governor and key advisors on this matter:

· Governor Brown: (916) 445-2841
· Nancy McFadden: Executive Secretary to the Governor: (916) 445-2841, nancy.mcfadden@gov.ca.gov
· David Lanier, Chief Deputy Legislative Secretary, Office of the Governor: (916) 445-4341, david.lanier@gov.ca.gov
· Marty Morgenstern, Secretary of Labor & Workforce Development: (916) 327-9064, marty.morgenstern@labor.ca.gov

If you have an opinion on this matter, you may wish to make your views known to the Governor.

Sincerely,

Jeff Gibeling


Jeffery C. Gibeling
Dean--Graduate Studies
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
phone: (530) 752-2050
FAX: (530) 752-6222

Yesterday we posted some of the administration's emails regarding UCPD's brutal attack on the #occupycal encampment on November 9. In these emails, Chancellor Birgeneau, who was out of the country at the time, is notified of what happened, and responds that the violence is "unfortunate" but necessary. "Obviously," he wrote to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, "this group want [sic] exactly such a confrontation." Later, Birgeneau wrote again to Breslauer, declaring that upholding the university's encampment policies at any cost was essential: "Otherwise, we will end up in Quan land."

These emails, along with a number of other documents, were uncovered by the ACLU of Northern California by means of a Public Records Act request. One of the other emails, not discussed by the ACLU or in the Chronicle article ("UC chancellor raised no objection to baton report"), caught our eye, especially because of some of the ongoing conversations about faculty and solidarity. Yesterday, for example, our comrades over at the Bicycle Barricade posted an important analysis of the situation at UC Davis in the context of the recent vote on a motion of no-confidence in Chancellor Katehi which was not approved. The piece should be read in full, but for now we just want to quote a small part:

Many professors, believing themselves to be the beneficiaries of privatization (in the form of grants, donations, endowed positions, etc.), support Katehi’s agenda. Now we know that at least 343 of them support enforcing privatization by violent means. This is useful knowledge.
We also know that “only 37% of UC Davis faculty vote on measures regarding campus events that received worldwide attention.” And professors complain about student apathy.

Those professors who brought forward the motions of no confidence and against police violence should be applauded. It’s risky to speak out when promotion and tenure depend on toeing the line. It’s encouraging to note that 312 professors support their students.

But these motions highlight the limits of institutional struggle (petitions, motions, declarations), where the administrators will always have the upper hand. They write the rules, and circumvent them when necessary. For years, faculty have fought a losing battle to defend shared governance, tenure-line positions, and academic freedom from a rapacious administrative logic. It’s time to abandon institutional forms of defense and turn the tables on the admins. Solidarity means attack.

With this in mind, take a look at the following email, sent by Vice Provost Janet Broughton on November 16:

































We don't know what the results of this fishing expedition were. What seems important here is the fact that the administration sees the faculty as (at least potentially) an ally instead of an adversary. Not only that, but it is clear that if professors were to show up to the encampment, and were to try to talk the students into leaving -- in the administration's words, if they were to "help to facilitate a voluntary end to the encampment" -- they would be doing the work of the administration. This is not to say that these professors would literally have conspired with the administration but rather that they would be furthering the administration's goals -- the constant de-escalation, displacement, bureaucratization, channeling organizing energy away from the antagonistic administration and into vague efforts to "further build[] support for public higher education."

If de-escalation is the administration's goal, direct action is the only alternative. We join with our comrades from Davis in calling for the faculty to reject institutional forms of struggle -- which are inevitably coopted and recuperated -- and join with students and workers in shutting down this university.

STRIKE MARCH 1 / OCCUPY MARCH 5
(more info here)

Calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi have come from the Occupy Davis GA, the online petition which currently has over 110,000 signatures, and numerous academic departments on campus. The English Department has called for not only Katehi's resignation but also, in the interest of student health and safety, the disbanding of UCPD. But some faculty, it seems, are privileged enough to feel differently. They signed a nauseatingly disingenuous letter of support for Chancellor Katehi:

We, the undersigned UC Davis faculty, support the free exchange of ideas on campus and students’ right to peaceful protests. We are appalled by the events of Friday, Nov. 18, on the Quad, but heartened by the chancellor’s apology and her commitment to listen to and work on the students’ concerns.

We strongly believe that Linda Katehi is well-qualified to lead our university through this difficult healing process and oppose the premature calls for her resignation; this is not in the best interest of our university.

Who are these people? How could they be so ignorant about the history of police violence at UC Davis and across the UC system? A quick glance is all it takes to see that they overwhelmingly represent professional schools and the hard sciences, departments which tend to benefit most from the UC administration's privatization agenda. But a compañero went even further and compiled the following list: "Meet the Snakes: Salaries of Faculty who Support Katehi."

It's a long list so we're putting it below the fold, but we recommend taking a look. The bottom line, however, is this: the average salary of the signatories is $151,111.50.

Sign here.

November 11, 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Birgeneau, the UC Berkeley administration, and the UC Regents:

We, the undersigned faculty, lecturers, and graduate student assistants—all of whom teach at Berkeley and are invested in the educational mission of this university—are outraged by the unnecessary and excessive use of violence by the police and sheriff’s deputies against peaceful protesters at UC Berkeley beginning on Wednesday, November 9, 2011.

We will not tolerate this assault on the historic legacy of free speech on this campus.

The protests on Sproul Plaza on November 9 were organized by a coalition of undergraduates, graduates, faculty, union members, and staff to clearly articulate links between the privatization of the university, the global financial crisis, the burdens of student debt, and the composition and power of the UC Regents, whose actions demonstrate a lack of concern with sustaining the public character of the UC system. The principles of these protests reach well beyond the Berkeley campus.

After a large demonstration at Sproul and a march into the city of Berkeley, the protesters formed a General Assembly that called for a non-violent encampment under the name Occupy Cal. As the encampment was being established, protesters were immediately met with physical violence by the police, including the jabbing and striking of students and others with batons. This assault by UCPD and Alameda County riot police against those peacefully assembled led to the forcible arrests of 39 protesters and one faculty member. Associate Professor Celeste Langan offered her wrist to the police in surrender, saying “arrest me, arrest me,” but was nevertheless aggressively pulled by her hair to the ground and cuffed. This began a series of tense confrontations—punctuated by further police violence—that lasted throughout the night and has persisted on our campus. The spectacle of police brutalizing members of our community does inestimable damage to our integrity, our reputation, and our standing as a public university.

We are appalled by the Chancellor’s account, in his November 10 “Message to the Campus Community,” that the police were “forced to use their batons.” We strenuously object to the charge that protesters—by linking arms and refusing to disperse—engaged in a form of “violence” directed at law enforcement. The protests did not justify the overwhelming use of force and severe bodily assault by heavily armed officers and deputies. Widely-circulated documentation from videos, photographs, and TV news outlets make plainly evident the squad tactics and individual actions of members of the UCPD and Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. This sends a message to the world that UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and student protesters are regarded on their own campus with suspicion and hostility rather than treated as participants in civil society.

We call on the Berkeley administration to immediately put an end to these grotesquely out-scale police responses to peaceful protest. We insist that the administration abandon the premise that the rigid, armed enforcement of a campus regulation, in circumstances lacking any immediate threat to safety, justifies the precipitious use of force.

We call upon the Chancellor to comply fully and in a timely manner with the Public Record Act request made in writing by the ACLU on November 10. We also call upon the Chancellor to initiate an independent investigation, separate from that to be undertaken by the campus Police Review Board, to ensure a fair review of events and procedures to prevent such attacks on free speech from happening in the future.

We also express our concern with the repressive policing that has occurred around the wider Occupy Wall Street movement—including Occupy Oakland, where undue force has led to numerous injuries such as those sustained by Iraq veteran Scott Olson. In solidarity with Occupy Cal and the Occupy movements around the country, we condemn these police acts unequivocally.

We call for greater attention to the substantive issues raised at the protests on November 9 regarding the privatization of education. With massive cuts in state funding and rising tuition costs across the community college system, the Cal State network, K-12, and the University of California, public education is undergoing a severe divestment. Student debt has reached unprecedented levels as bank profits swell. We decry the growing privatization and tuition increases that are currently heavily promoted by the corporate UC Board of Regents.

We express NO CONFIDENCE in the Regents, who have failed in their responsibility to fight for state funding for public education, and have placed the burden of the budget crisis on the backs of students.

We express NO CONFIDENCE in the willingness of the Chancellor, and other leaders of the UC Berkeley administration, to respond appropriately to student protests, to secure student welfare, and to respect freedom of speech and assembly on the Berkeley campus.


Signed,

The following statement in support of the wall street occupation is currently circulating amongst UC faculty. At the moment, it has more than 600 signatures:

We, members of the faculty of the University of California, write in solidarity with and in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement now underway in our city and elsewhere. Many observers claim that the movement has no specific goals; this is not our understanding. The movement aims to bring attention to the various forms of inequality – economic, political, and social – that characterize our times, that block opportunities for the young and strangle the hopes for better futures for the majority while generating vast profits for a very few.

The demonstrators are demanding substantive change that redresses the many inequitable features of our society, which have been exacerbated by the financial crisis of 2009 and the subsequent recession. Among these are: the lack of accountability on the part of the bankers and Wall Street firms that drove the economy to disaster; rising economic inequality in the United States; the intimate relationship between the corporate power and government at all levels, which has made genuine change impossible; the need for dramatic action to provide employment for the jobless and protect programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in part by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes; and the disastrous effects of the costly wars that the United States has been conducting.

Only by identifying the complex interconnections between repressive economic, social and political regimes can social and economic justice prevail in this country and around the globe. It is this identification that we applaud, and we call on all members of the University of California community to lend their support to the peaceful and potentially transformative movement.

A question this statement raises, and partially addresses, is how the occupy wall street movement could give way to large-scale social transformations. The petition suggests that a commitment to make connections between particular moments of social antagonism is a precondition of such transformative force, and it commends the wall street protesters for "identifying the complex interconnections between repressive economic, social and political regimes."

This seems right to me, as far as it goes (even if it's perhaps overly-optimistic about the politics of many OWS encampments). But we'd want to ask what the signatories and authors of this statement mean by "making connections." Is this merely a matter of slogans and speeches (i.e. the relatively public and programmatic acts of speech and writing associated with the movement)? Or does it also involve connecting the bodies and psyches of those fighting different forms of oppression, those caught up in previously discrete spheres of antagonism? Does it mean, for instance, enabling students to recognize their ties to those engaged in exploitative service/care work, and to realize forms of mutual solidarity with such workers? Or might it mean taking inspiration from dock workers who've often acted against police violence, mass incarceration, and the colonial occupation of Palestine?

It's worth proposing then a slightly expanded account of what it would take, in our moment, for the wall street protests to give way to large-scale, emancipatory transformations.

Three preconditions for such transformations are: the spread of Wall Street-style plaza occupations to new locations; the linking up of such occupations with mass strikes, seizures, and mutual aid efforts carried out across a range of social sites, including universities and other workplaces; and the undoing of repressive state forces. Not only are these preconditions for broader, emancipatory transformations, but also for the survival of the occupy wall street movement itself. As we saw this week, city and state governments will temporarily call off their armed agents only if they are afraid of an intensification and expansion of plaza occupations.

If stasis sets in, the state will move against us.

Today, the Daily Cal reports what we've known for awhile: that faculty, with a few important and inspiring exceptions, are no longer part of what is now a student-worker alliance against the privatization of public education.

“The faculty is a whole range — we don’t agree on anything except that we want this place to be great," Jacobsen said. "We differ on tactics, on strategy, even sometimes on what great means, but we want this university to be great."

It's important to acknowledge that this phenomenon is not new -- it just took the Daily Cal a year or two to figure it out. Since the 2009 September walkout, faculty have remained deeply divided about potential responses to privatization -- from embracing tuition hikes to preserve "excellence" and proposing that flagship institutions like UC Berkeley become autonomous from the rest of the UC system to attempting to channel popular outrage into support for a California ballot initiative and Democratic party legislators (a faith in in the Democratic Party which has had devastating consequences for California public higher education).

Split between the more politically moderate SAVE and the more activist Solidarity Alliance, ladder-rank faculty willing to speak out against privatization were from the very beginning a tiny fraction of total faculty. Although there are exceptions, ladder-rank faculty have historically shown little to no interest in supporting, for example, ongoing university staff labor union struggles and opposing UCOP's infamous pattern of intimidation and open contempt for organized labor -- from unionized graduate students to unionized librarians.

We've been discussing these issues here for some time. Last November, for example, we examined the comments made by a number of faculty members regarding the round of protests, walk-outs, and occupations that took place in 2009-2010. What they said made clear that they no longer saw themselves as participants or even understood the rationale for public protest, let alone potentially disruptive protest. There was a strong sense that the faculty saw themselves instead as "standing on the sidelines, observers of what is essentially a student movement...bystanders." Though ladder-rank faculty are simply not impacted by the tuition hikes the way students themselves are, many faculty (especially those without tenure) hate the way the university is being managed but often continue to observe the education "movement" as though they were outside of it and as though it were a single homogeneous organization.
 
More recently, of course, we examined the striking lack of solidarity found in the recommendations of the Academic Council of the Academic Senate, seen in the Daily Cal article as the one remaining site from which faculty are attempting to contest the administration's plans. In these recommendations, the Council not only comes out in favor of tuition increases for students but also endorses the expansion of contingent/precarious adjunct labor at the UC -- a superexploited class of lecturers with no benefits, health insurance, or job protections which as others have pointed out is a fundamental policy tenet of the privatization of higher education nationally. Obviously these views do not represent the entirety of the UC faculty, but the distance between these recommendations and the original general demands of the SAVE faculty group are stark: 

"To ensure the future of the University of California as the world’s premier public university system:

• We demand that Gov. Schwarzenegger, the legislature, and the Board of Regents fulfill the Higher Education Compact (2005) and reaffirm the commitments set forth in the Master Plan for Higher Education (Donahoe Act; 1960).

• We oppose the Board of Regents’ privatization strategies and call on the Office of the President to act in concert with faculty to preserve the highest level of excellence in the core teaching and research missions of the University.

• We urge UC alumni to support these missions as their highest priority.

• We insist upon greater administrative and budgetary transparency in recognition of the principle of shared governance."

At times, the UC faculty has been something of a fickle ally in our fight against austerity and privatization. The massive walkout on September 24, 2009 was successful precisely because the faculty had invested large amounts of time and energy in organizing over the summer, but as the protests began to escalate in the fall they became hesitant and many withdrew. Many students outside of Wheeler Hall on November 20, 2009 were shocked to see the faculty they saw as the most radical and sympathetic yelling at them to sit down and back off, that the squads of heavily-armed riot cops were there to protect them. After the incident at the Chancellor's house, perhaps, the split became insurmountable. A sign of this rupture is the infamous email where Professor Wendy Brown calls the Live Week protesters "hooligans" and "10 year olds," and the protest itself "pure stupidity" and "bullshit." By the spring, most of the faculty (with a few singular exceptions, of course) saw themselves as fully external to the anti-austerity struggle at the university.

Seen in this light, it's not particularly surprising that the UC Academic Council, the administrative arm of the Academic Senate, has come out in favor of tuition increases [PDF]. While "register[ing] dismay at State's continuing disinvestment in higher education," the resolution concludes:

The Academic Council advises President Yudof to request that the Regents increase mandatory systemwide charges effective in Fall term 2011 in an amount sufficient to offset the $150 million reduction in State funding contained in the State 2010-2011 budget.

If solidarity is about drawing lines that separate friends from enemies, then this statement is incredibly revealing about not only where we should situate the faculty but also how the faculty see themselves. As laripley says, "so much for solidarity."

[Update Saturday 12:44pm]: Via dettman, the Academic Council is also apparently in favor of expanding contingent labor:

As reported in the SF Chronicle, the Academic Council recommended last week that the University expand the use of contingent faculty "where appropriate" across the system, in the words of system-wide senate chair Dan Simmons. We have not seen any official announcement, or document such as meeting minutes to confirm this. But this would appear a major shift in the official position of the faculty: since when does the Senate recommend the expansion of non-senate faculty? It's enough that the administration has become addicted to the use of exploited, under-paid, and over-worked lecturers. It's a completely different position for the system-wide senate to come to the same conclusion. The senate should be in the business of expanding (at least some of) the benefits of the tenure system to contingent faculty -- not sell our collective soul to satisfy the administration's appetite for a flexible workforce.

Summer means no students -- for the UC administration, that means the absence of one of the largest obstacles to their privatizing designs. There's a similar logic in the UC regents' decision to hold their meetings at UCSF Mission Bay. It is a highly strategic space: not only is it extremely out of the way and difficult to get to from Berkeley, but it's also located in what is essentially a post-industrial wasteland, with little else around to provide cover. After thousands protested the meeting at UCLA in November 2009 to approve the original 32 percent tuition hike, it seems the regents decided to retire to less accessible locations.

Summer vacation is the temporal version of UCSF Mission Bay. It's not surprising that it was in July 2009 that the regents voted to give UC president Mark Yudof "emergency powers" due to the "state of financial emergency," which gave the administration unilateral authority to impose austerity measures. Especially as "shared governance" becomes less and less of a reality, we should expect more and more executive decisions to be made and policies to be approved at this time of the year.

The title of this article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel is right on: "During Serenity of Summer, UCSC Implements 'Painful' Cuts."

SANTA CRUZ -- UC Santa Cruz's wooded campus is relatively serene in the early days of the more quiet summer session.

Beneath the tranquility though, the campus is set to execute another round of cuts including laying off roughly 50 non-academic employees in what has become an annual occurrence since 2008.

The layoffs go into effect on Friday, July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. In addition to layoffs, workers are seeing their hours (and pay) cut back. As expected, these cuts will primarily affect non-academic workers. (While there are no layoffs on the academic side of things, 40 more faculty positions that are currently empty, and 120 teaching assistantships for graduate students, will be permanently eliminated.) While UC spokespeople talk about how much much their work is valued, they acknowledge that the student-as-consumer is the primary target.

"After years of reductions in state support, we've gotten to the point where every corner of the campus has been impacted by these cuts," UCSC spokesman Jim Burns said. "It's also true that units farther from the classroom have been particularly hard hit -- not because the campus doesn't value those areas and the people working in them. But because we have tried to the extent possible to reduce cuts to the academic areas in an effort to protect student access to the courses they need."

Much like the tuition increases, however, these poverty wages are not a function of the so-called financial crisis. Rather, it's a function of a class war that's been occurring for decades:

During her two decades at UCSC, [custodian Rosario] Cortez has held several second jobs, including other custodial positions and a job at a bread factory. Currently she works five days a week at UCSC, eight hours a day, where she earns about $2,200 a month after taxes, then makes and sells tamales on the weekends for extra income.

Cortez's sentiments were echoed by Ernesto Encinas, a cook at UCSC who cares for his 86-year-old mother and 14-year-old son.

"Everyone I know has a second job," Encinas said. "There is no rest with the wages we make here. You can't make ends meet with just the one job with the way cost of living keeps rising. Any little change in our income can be devastating."

With these cuts comes not a decrease in the amount of work expected but precisely the opposite: speedup. Custodians, for example, are required to clean more areas during a single shift. Administrators get around this in a curious way -- by telling workers, apparently, to "clean less," that is, to do a worse job at cleaning more areas. It's a recipe for disaster -- especially in the context of ongoing layoffs, this amounts to an incredibly difficult balancing act for the workers. On this note, check out what an asshole Jim Dunne, the director of UCSC's physical plants department, is:

"I have heard [the complaints]," Dunne said. "We often only have a few months to implement changes and rework how we do things. We are making a lot of effort to communicate to custodians what that redesign is, but adjustment takes time. It is a difficult situation for both sides. Custodians take a lot of pride in their work. When you tell them to clean something less, that's hard for them."

Yeah, that's the only thing that's hard for them.

If they ever doubted it before, UC administrators now understand that the best time to implement austerity are the summer months. Summer evacuates much of the potential resistance -- with students and faculty mostly away, the only thing standing in the way are the workers, precisely those hardest hit by the cutbacks. It also functions usefully as a time barrier -- one of the administration's most effective tactics is simply to wait protesters out. (Look at what's happened with the last two hunger strikes at UC Berkeley.) Finally, summer marks the point at which many veteran student protesters graduate and move on. For anti-austerity protesters, it will become increasingly important to incorporate the summer into strategic thinking. This does not necessarily imply a need for stable organizing structures, which contribute their own problems, but it does indicate the need to directly address and even intervene in some way during these months. After all, the success of the walkout on September 24, 2009 depended on the work that was done by students, faculty, and workers before the school year had even begun. This does not necessarily have to take place on campus. It could also mean looking to other organizing bodies outside the spaces of the university that are attempting to build capacity for resistance against austerity.

If fall is the moment of attack, and after the fall the moment of reflection, then before the fall is clearly the moment of preparation. But maybe it's time to rethink this calendar?

The new issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly includes a section called "Against the Day," in which a number of UC students reflect on the struggle over public education in California. Most of the essays focus in some way or another on the protests that took place in and around the UC during 2009-2010. From the introduction, by Christopher Newfield and Colleen Lye:

The essays collected here are all written by University of California students who were active in the California student movements of 2009–2010. These movements were the largest and most widespread campus-based actions in the United States since the 1960s. They were also remarkable for their intellectual diversity, their successful efforts to link generally disconnected issues, their systematic attempts to rethink student movement strategies, their reflections on their own internal divisions, and their escalating confrontations with local administrations and the police.

The movements became visible to the public in November 2009, when the UC Board of Regents voted for a 32 percent tuition increase -- on top of the doubling of tuition that it had already implemented over the course of the decade. But many of the group participants had been operating for years, and the conditions that reached a crisis in 2009 had been reshaping UC and its companion system, the California State University, for two decades.

Links to free downloads of the essays (via) are below the fold.

(pdf here)

State-wide actions are listed here (via Mobilize Berkeley).

[Updates Wednesday 5:32pm]: Pictures from the rally that's happening now in front of Wheeler Hall.

(via @jpanzar)

... and, as always, the cops are hovering in the background...


Images from UC Davis here. Some details from earlier in the day are here.

Reclamations is back with issue 3. Table of contents (with links) is below the fold:

There's an interesting conversation developing on twitter right now around faculty participation (or lack thereof) in the protests around fee hikes and budget cuts at the UC. It started with this post by Angus Johnston, who noted parenthetically in a discussion about the protest at yesterday's regents' meeting, where a cop drew his gun on unarmed students and pepper spray was used indiscriminately, that "The faculty, meanwhile, have mostly stayed silent and disengaged." Check out @studentactivism, @javierest, @reclaimuc, @santacruztacean, @dettman for their thoughts.

Here's an email that speaks to this discussion. It's a little old, and obviously is not really generalizable, but it's nevertheless a fairly striking statement on the interest, energy, drive, and engagement of the faculty. In part, this is because of who wrote it: UC Berkeley professor Ananya Roy, the star of that (in many ways problematic) New Yorker article from last winter about the student movement in the UC. The email comes in response to discussion on the faculty listserv about whether to hold a teach-in on October 6, the day before the October 7 Day of Action. In 2009, faculty led a teach-in on September 23, the day before the massive walkout in which 5000 people participated. The teach-in in the Wheeler Hall auditorium was packed to capacity, so much so that many of those who couldn't get in held their own teach-in outside on the steps. Clearly, faculty engagement contributed to the massive turnout in September 2009. Contrast that with Professor Roy's take on the situation in October 2010:

From: Ananya Roy
To: Saveplus
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: Re Oct. 6th teach-in

Dear Barrie [Thorne] and friends,

Thanks for the update. I teach a large undergraduate class this semester - as I did last Fall - and the difference is palpable. Only 2-3 students out of a class of 700 have spoken to me about Oct 7 or seem actively engaged in the planning for it. Our class midterm was scheduled for Oct 7 and I moved it to Oct 5 but I did so because I wanted to have the flexibility to honor a walk-out if one takes shape rather than because of a call by students to do so. I think there is very little energy or enthusiasm among the general student body about Oct 7. It is not that these students don't care about what is happening to public education in California - they do and they are experiencing it first hand. But I am of the opinion that the activist students, even brilliant activists like Ricardo [Gomez], are engaged in conversations with themselves - within SWAT, within the General Assembly. The task of building a popular movement seems to have collapsed. And perhaps this year we (faculty) are not as willing as we were last year to serve as mediators or interlocuters. I will honor Oct 7 but I am not sure what that will mean. But I am also quite convinced that a teach-in will not draw the students who most need to be energized and that a teach-in on Oct 6 is terribly late in the game to build momentum for Oct 7.

Best,
Ananya

One way to read this would be that Roy is just being realistic -- the state of the "movement" was very different in October 2010 than in September 2009. But what's hard to reconcile is the sense that faculty are standing on the sidelines, observers of what is essentially a student movement. They are bystanders. It is the fault of the students that the movement is dead, and there's nothing faculty can do to change that. All they can do is wait for students to organize something -- but really, those students aren't even doing a decent job of it. They're talking to themselves, they're not getting anything done. They've failed. So much so that the faculty should not even put together a teach-in to mobilize for October 7.

In the end, a teach-in happened, and it was supported by SAVE and the Berkeley Faculty Association. It was much smaller than the year before, and only one professor spoke. The walkout the next day seemed large considering the level of mobilization on campus, but it too was still far smaller than the previous year's. Anyway, the point is not that there's some causal relationship between Roy's email and the smaller numbers on October 7. Rather, it provides a sort of snapshot of a faculty view of these protests -- student protests -- about their horizon of possibility, and about the ways in which faculty can (and cannot) participate.

[Update Thursday 12:04pm]: @javierest tweets, "worth noting:faculty leaders. TJ Clark: retired. gone to london.Nelson Maldonado:on leave.recruited away? wendy brown and judith butler: also on extended leave. pos leaving. who's left?"

In fact, from the Wheeler occupation on, almost all of these professors have had a highly ambivalent relationship with student protests. I'm going to copy some of the things that they've written here below the fold, so you can get an idea of where they stand. Of course, they've also said and done other stuff, so what follows shouldn't be taken as an across the board rejection of faculty support (although often the faculty seems to be condemning student action).

(more at occupyca)

by anonymous

Mice are eating away at our libraries, which smell faintly of rot. Accordions of police barricades stand in for public sculptures. They greet our puzzlement with cold handshakes. The buzz of helicopters interrupts the hum of AV machines: unwelcome ostinatos. We are being privatized; this is how it feels.

We now know that the first to be fired in the name of efficiency will be custodial and dining service workers. Tuition increases will continue, and will continue to push members of the working classes away from our classrooms. We know that the acceptance rates for black and latina/o students are dropping sharply, while we are opening our doors to relatively wealthy out-of-state students. Shared governance is shattered, professors are leaving, and the UC Commission on the Future envisions squadrons of GSIs 'teaching' online classes to a pool of undergraduates who will be ushered away after three years.

This is the future we are being asked to accept. But we are having no part of it.

Our acts of refusal this past year have been varied, and have had various effects. Two such acts at UC Berkeley, my place of employment, have shown us our strength, and have helped set the agenda for the coming year: the occupation of Wheeler Hall in the fall, and the Hunger Strike in the spring.

The day after the Regents raised tuition by 32 percent, consigning our generation to a few thousand more years of debt, we opened up a vortex on campus by locking ourselves in Wheeler Hall and demanding that the University rehire laid off workers. Early in the morning, the chancellor emailed the campus claiming that the police were taking care of us; but late in the afternoon, we still hadn't left the building. We remained inside only because of the hundreds who were outside; chanting, pressing against police barricades, getting soaked, enduring beatings, refusing to leave. Our vortex had drawn out the passions of students and the solidarity of workers, who felt, perhaps unconsciously, that reclaiming space on campus was the proper response to the theft of our time.

Since then, those of us who locked ourselves in Wheeler Hall have been threatened with seven month suspensions. We are told that being suspended will be good for our personal growth and education. We are told that there are strict regulations on when, how, and where protests can take place. There is a Code of Student Conduct. We violated the Code. We are to be punished, re-educated, developed, fixed.

Remarkably though, the Administration is the only body on campus that seems to believe in this Code and its enforcement. In re-education. In a one hour window, per day, for amplified protest. The faculty, through the divisional council; the workers, through the unions; and the students, through the ASUC, have all called for our charges to be dropped. Those who work, study, and teach in the buildings on campus have thus begun to assert their own anti-code of conduct -- a 'code' that nurtures our capacity to protest and that treats buildings not as property to be guarded or capital to be efficiently employed but as public goods to be put to use in ways that are determined by, and that call forth, our collective passions.

Engaged students, workers, and professors are starting to formulate the principles of a free University -- a University that remains merely spectral at the moment. A shadow University. Traces of its possible realization inhabit our present; it's time for us to seize, turn over, and extrapolate these traces.

Late in the spring, another vortex opened up on campus. This one lasted ten days, and centered on the empty stomachs and wan faces of students & workers on hunger strike. The strikers began by demanding that the Administration demonstrate a bit of leadership by denouncing Arizona's recent anti-immigrant legislation, by declaring UC Berkeley a sanctuary campus, by rehiring workers, and by dropping conduct charges. But by the end of the strike, those who danced with empty stomachs saw the recalcitrant chancellors' mealy-mouthed words for the dead letters they were. A hand-drawn sign lingered in the branches of a tree: “fire admin” it read. We were done with them.

Our definitive break from the administration occurred a week into the strike, minutes before dawn. Police came to evict the hunger strikers. Yellow tape was stretched around the lawn in front of California Hall. The vice chancellor sent a mass email declaring that the strike had ended and that we were dispersed. But students and workers still weren't eating. And we were beginning to mass on the edge of the cordon.

From then on our presence was spectral, yet our force was real.

That day we blocked the doors of California Hall, held hands around the building, chanted, read aloud a faculty petition that “reject[ed] police interference into a non-violent protest,” marched across campus, sat and danced in front of the chancellors house. All day our numbers grew. All day we felt our collective power, and improvised with confidence. And in our practice we went beyond our words: we encircled California Hall not because we wanted crumbs from the chancellor, but to block the building; to shut it down. We were done with them; done with their bloated salaries and their fear of democracy; done with their hatred of organized labor, their plans to privatize us, and their cynical invocations of 'diversity.' We were done being ruled by capital's bureaucrats. We had different plans.

If the hunger strike put on the agenda the closure of California Hall, it also articulated a principle of student/worker protest that we will need to take seriously in the coming months: if it is to be emancipatory, such protest will necessarily look beyond the walls of the University. The strikers saw their protest as part of a regional struggle against racism and the criminalization of immigrants. They acted in concert with those in LA, Tucson, and Phoenix taking direct actions against SB1070 and the militarization of the border.

More solidarity actions of this sort are on the agenda for the coming year.

The governor of California has recently declared that, while higher education should be funded, welfare, childcare, mental health services, and services for people with disabilities should be eviscerated. This is not the 'victory' we were fighting for, and not only because it won't stop the Regents from raising our tuition. Our struggle is against privatization; against austerity measures that re-segregate the state and that make it harder for poor and working class people to get by. Such measures will continue to grind us down until, through collective struggle, we render them inoperative. And we will not stop fighting.

On campus, we will reclaim the spaces and times of our lives. On October 7th, our next day of action, we will initiate an indefinite strike, to be maintained until our shadow University has been made real.

Off campus, we will act in solidarity with those who are striking back against neoliberalism and mass racialized incarceration. We look forward to a statewide general strike, when the words on all our lips will be: “Let's get free.” When such a strike comes, we'll turn the Universities into ghost towns.

We'll be there in the streets,
and will see you there...

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

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.

Sorry, this was posted earlier, but it's so amazing it has to be posted again, this time all by itself. Christopher Kutz, the chair of the UC Berkeley faculty senate, sent this email out yesterday:

Dear all,

Like many of the readers of this list, I am very excited about the March on the 4th in Sacramento -- SAVE has done
an incredible job organizing.

Perhaps like many of you, I am also getting pretty concerned by all the reports about plans for more occupations, "actions,"
and more confrontational kinds of campus protests next week, including on the 4th. I know a lot of this is just smoke, an attempt deliberately to rattle the cages of those of us who think we need to make the public, political case for higher education. But Durant Hall is evidence that some things will happen -- things that have the potential to get students hurt, and to shift the focus from the insistent demand to restore educational funding, to violent internecine conflict on campus. I really don't want either of those.

The students bent on occupation and confrontation will do what they do, and will take the consequences. But I am especially concerned to avoid another Nov. 20th-like event, where the real chaos and danger lay outside, with large groups of protestors. My fear is that there may be many students, eager to support the inside protest or simply curious, who will not know how to protest safely, without putting themselves at risk of arrest, on campus discipline, or injury, especially when they hear voices of some activists urging them to rush the police lines.

So I thought the Senate might directly recruit some "Casque bleu" peacekeepers from among the faculty, who could be counted on to play the role some faculty (particularly SAVE members) did in November, of trying to calm the crowd and instruct them, via bullhorn or leaflet, on "Peaceful Protest 101." If you would be willing to play this role, or know someone who would, could you please write me directly to let me know? You won't be representing the administration, or any particular principle except informed consent on the part of students -- how to engage in protest without (unwittingly) risking injury or academic career.

thanks,
Chris

Students: the faculty thinks you're stupid. Prove them wrong. Strike March 4!

The first one was sent out today to UC Berkeley building coordinators by Stephen Stoll, Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness/Homeland Security:

Building Coordinators

PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF

As you may have heard, this coming week has several scheduled activities, including the planned rally on Thursday, March 4^th. There may also be other associated activities around the campus, including potential marches through campus buildings and “sit-ins”. These activities may present some unique challenges for the campus as the majority of our facilities are open to the public.

Although we do not expect any malicious activities, its possible your building may be marched through or even have minor disruptions, so it is best to be a little more vigilant for those who may be roaming our halls.

As always, UCPD will be continuously monitoring activities around campus and if the situation arises, be providing you with information specific to your building/facility.

It might be good to review standard operating procedures for this eventuality (see below).

**************************************************

Please remind your building occupants of the following procedures should marchers enter your building:

If marchers enter your building, let them. Try to carry on business as usual. If the noise becomes too great, or the crowd too large, feel free to close and lock your office doors - this is a departmental decision.

Do not close your buildings unless the Police advise you to.

As always, if you have questions please feel free to contact the UC Police department at 642-6760 or call via cell phone to 642-3333.

**************************************************

From an informational perspective, if you observe any unusual gatherings or activities in your building/facility, if you observe any suspicious activities or if you experience actual disruptions to classrooms or administrative routines, call UCPD (642-6760 or 642-3333) and we will provide the appropriate support.

We will be utilizing the BC email as a conduit for campus-wide specific information we need to disseminate, so please check your email regularly.

Thank you for helping get the word out!

PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF

The second email was sent out yesterday to the UC Berkeley faculty senate by chair Christopher Kutz:

Dear all,

Like many of the readers of this list, I am very excited about the March on the 4th in Sacramento -- SAVE has done
an incredible job organizing.

Perhaps like many of you, I am also getting pretty concerned by all the reports about plans for more occupations, "actions,"
and more confrontational kinds of campus protests next week, including on the 4th. I know a lot of this is just smoke, an attempt deliberately to rattle the cages of those of us who think we need to make the public, political case for higher education. But Durant Hall is evidence that some things will happen -- things that have the potential to get students hurt, and to shift the focus from the insistent demand to restore educational funding, to violent internecine conflict on campus. I really don't want either of those.

The students bent on occupation and confrontation will do what they do, and will take the consequences. But I am especially concerned to avoid another Nov. 20th-like event, where the real chaos and danger lay outside, with large groups of protestors. My fear is that there may be many students, eager to support the inside protest or simply curious, who will not know how to protest safely, without putting themselves at risk of arrest, on campus discipline, or injury, especially when they hear voices of some activists urging them to rush the police lines.

So I thought the Senate might directly recruit some "Casque bleu" peacekeepers from among the faculty, who could be counted on to play the role some faculty (particularly SAVE members) did in November, of trying to calm the crowd and instruct them, via bullhorn or leaflet, on "Peaceful Protest 101." If you would be willing to play this role, or know someone who would, could you please write me directly to let me know? You won't be representing the administration, or any particular principle except informed consent on the part of students -- how to engage in protest without (unwittingly) risking injury or academic career.

thanks,
Chris