The SF Appeal has a pretty decent roundup of mainstream media links, but an even better one by SFSU journalism student Katherine Grant is here. By far the best report is at the SF Bay Guardian (the worst, as usual, is the drivel from the Chronicle):

Before the banners and bullhorns came out, BART spokesperson Jim Allison told the Guardian that if BART police deemed a gathering inside the unpaid area of the station to be dangerous, "we would ask people to disperse." If they didn't disperse, "we would declare an unlawful assembly." Allison said protesters were free to exercise their first amendment rights to protest inside the areas of the station that don't require a ticket to enter. He said people could do that as long as they were not "interrupting or interfering" with regular service. When the Guardian caught up with Allison after the protest by phone to find out why his statements about the dispersal order were contradicted by police activity, he refused to answer our questions, directing us instead to watch a press conference on the BART website.

"I'm going off duty," he said after calling the Guardian in response to a page, after being asked several times why BART police had not issued a dispersal order before surrounding people and arresting them. "I simply cannot devote the rest of my night to answering your questions."

[...]

Before police closed in, the protest featured some 60 protesters chanting things like, "How can they protect and serve us? The BART police just make me nervous." One banner, from a group called Feminists Against Cops, read, "Disarm BART, Arm Feminists."

Things heated up when the protest got closer to the fare gates, at which point police may have determined that protesters were interfering with service. At one point, police tackled a masked demonstrator to the ground. However, when people were detained, they were not standing directly in front of the fare gates.

Police did not make any public statements indicating that the situation had been deemed unlawful before surrounding the group of detainees, nor did they issue a dispersal order. We were told that we were not free to leave.

While I was detained along with Luke Thomas, a reporter from the popular political Fog City Journal, and freelance reporter Josh Wolf, an officer told us that we were being detained on suspected violation of California Penal Code 369-i, which prohibits interfering with the operations of a railroad.

Thomas phoned Matt Gonzalez, former president of the Board of Supervisors and now a chief attorney with the Public Defender's office, to ask about that law. Gonzalez looked it up and told him that there was an exception to that law which "does not prohibit picketing in the adjacent area of any property" belonging to a railroad. So it would seem that the protesters, along with more than a dozen journalists, were being unlawfully detained. When we put this question to one of the officers who stood holding a nightstick and blocking us in, he refused to address the issue directly, repeating that we weren't free to leave.

Members of the press with San Francisco Police Department issued credentials were made to line up and present their press passes to San Francisco police officers, who had been called in to assist. The police officers took away media's press passes, saying it was SFPD property and could be retrieved later -- which meant that if journalists had opted to stay and cover any further police activity, we would have had no way of presenting credentials to avoid arrest. We were issued Certificates of Release and ushered outside of the station, where it was impossible to see what was happening, and therefore, impossible to do our jobs as reporters.

Meanwhile, over at the Glen Park BART station:

BART spokeswoman Luna Salaver says about a dozen men wearing black hoods smashed fare gates with hammers at the Glen Park station Thursday night. Eight gates were damaged.

The vandals also scrawled the name of Charles Hill at the station. Hill was a transient who was fatally shot by BART police after he allegedly lunged at them with a knife on July 3.

Salaver says BART police are investigating whether the vandalism is tied to a protest earlier Thursday at the Powell Street station — the latest in a series of protests that began after Hill's death.

Here's a statement posted by "Some Bay Area Anarchists" at Indybay:

On the evening of September 8th, 2011 we sabotaged the fare machines, turnstyles and facade of the Glen Park BART station in South San Francisco. Just as we have been inspired by comparable actions of anarchists world wide, we hope to act as a catalyst to incite similar actions against the state and it's apparatuses of control.

Our spray cans dispensed slogans and our hammers shattered screens and ticket readers. We look to each other to find meaning and reject the limiting discourse of rights and free speech as a vehicle for our rage. We communicate this now to denounce the authority of a society that violently represses us every time we step out of line.

All police are the enemy. We articulate this when we choose to honor the lives of Oscar Grant, Charles Hill and Kenneth Harding by fighting for our own lives. This same passion for freedom can be observed from Seattle to Greece to Chile. As anarchists we understand that the social control of transit fares exists in harmony with the deadly enforcement of the physical, emotional, and social desolation of our everyday lives. We aim to interrupt this concert at every feasible opportunity.

The police and the media will spin this event as petty vandalism. Some will condemn us and suggest that violence against property promotes state repression, but we have lost our fear. We do not seek approval from any authority and for this reason we abandon the tired structure of demand.We look to explore our capacity to exemplify our collective abilities and to encourage others to resist in ever more autonomous and uncontrollable ways. Freedom to those arrested at today's Powell Street action. See you at the barricades.

PS: mad props to the wildcat longshoremen of washington. keep it wild

Section 102.24: Conduct, where the actor means to communicate a serious expression of intent to terrorize, or acts in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing, one or more University students, faculty, or staff. ‘Terrorize’ means to cause a reasonable person to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or those acting under his/her control. ‘Reckless disregard’ means consciously disregarding a substantial risk. This section applies without regard to whether the conduct is motivated by race, ethnicity, personal animosity, or other reasons. This section does not apply to conduct that constitutes the lawful defense of oneself, of another, or of property.
 
Section 104.90: Sanctions [for any violations of Section 102.00, Grounds for Discipline] may be enhanced where an individual was selected because of the individual’s race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, ancestry, service in the uniformed services, physical or mental disability, medical condition, or perceived membership in any of these classifications.

Obviously this is a long-delayed response -- a year and a half after the fact -- to the property destruction at the Chancellor's house, which then-Governor Schwarzenegger called not only a "criminal act" but went as far as to label it "terrorism" itself. In fact, the text of these violations is almost exactly the same as what we posted last October -- the only difference is that where the new version uses "those acting under his/her control" the previous version read "his/her confederates." A strange word choice, admittedly.

But the question this raises is the following: when have members of the university community had cause to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or those acting under his/her control? Oh right, it was when the Chancellor invited the riot police onto campus, and they, acting under his control, hit us with clubs, shot us with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and aimed their guns at us. We know what this is all about.







It's like the budget cuts, where the highest-level administrators have declared themselves exempt: one set of rules applies to them, another one applies to the rest of us.

Today's conduct hearing, for one of the Wheeler Hall occupiers from 2009, was live-tweeted by @reclaimuc, @callie_hoo, and @sgnfr. All of these twitter feeds are conveniently available on a twitter list we've put together, appropriately titled "kangaroo court." The cast of characters includes Thomas Frampton, star counsel for the defense coming off a huge victory in his last case; Jeff Woods, prosecutor for the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) and widely seen as one of the stupidest and most incompetent people in UC Berkeley's administrative bureaucracy; Ron Fearing, professor of electrical engineering and the faculty chair of the hearing panel; and, in a minor role, Stacy Holguin, who interprets the Code of Conduct as OSC's "procedural adviser" and monitors protest actions as administrative spy. The hearing ended for the day around 5 pm, and will be taken up once again on -- and this is entirely appropriate -- April Fool's Day.

In the middle of the hearing, we received the following update from thosewhouseit:

What a joke this whole conduct process is. We just learned that Student Regent Jesse Cheng was found guilty of sexual battery by UC Irvine’s OSC. The sentence? Disciplinary probation. To put this in perspective, this fucking rapist gets off with probation, while one of this blog’s own contributors was given a stayed suspension and 20 hours of community service . . . for his participation in the 2009 occupation of Wheeler Hall. Even more egregiously, Cheng will not be removed from his position on the Board of Regents, in effect condoning sexual battery. Again: non-violent civil disobedience gets stayed suspension and community service; rape -- let’s dispense with the technocratic minimization as “unwanted touching” and call a spade a spade -- gets disciplinary probation, a markedly lighter sentence. What the fuck is wrong with these people?!

This is not a new or accidental phenomenon, nor is it only a question of Cheng's position as student regent. Rather, it speaks to the nature of the university's quasi-legal student conduct apparatus itself. The system operates according to assumptions of difference, inferiority, and hierarchy -- whether they are based on politics, age, race, or -- as is the case here -- gender. Again, this speaks to not some sort of idle speculation but a striking pattern of impunity. Take the following examples, just published in the last couple weeks. First, an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer discusses the case of a female UC Berkeley student who was raped four years ago by a "persistent upperclassman." Pay close attention to what OSC does and does not do in the context of these rape allegations:

UC Merced student Peter Howell, who was arraigned on December 28 after being subjected to a full-fledged manhunt by UCSF police, continues to face criminal charges stemming from the protest at the UC Regents' meeting at UCSF Mission Bay last November. The most serious of these charges is a felony, for allegedly taking the baton of and attacking UC Irvine police officer Jared Kemper, who pulled his gun on and threatened unarmed protesters. As thosewhouseit has convincingly documented (here and here), the charges are completely absurd -- KTVU's video of the incident clearly shows Kemper violently pushing his way through a group of students and in the process dropping his baton on the ground. Nevertheless, at his arraignment the judge refused to consider reducing the felony charge to a misdemeanor.

We have just received word that Peter's preliminary hearing will take place on Tuesday, Feb 22 at 9am in room 10 at 850 Bryant in San Francisco. Come out to support him!

Last December, Governor Schwarzenegger invoked a rhetoric of terrorism to describe protests that had taken place on UC Berkeley campus:

California will not tolerate any type of terrorism against any leaders including educators. The attack on Chancellor Birgeneau’s home is a criminal act and those who participated will be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law. Debate is the foundation of democracy and I encourage protestors to find peaceful and productive ways to express their opinions.

At the time, Schwarzenegger's hyperbolic language, along with that of UC Berkeley administrators, was widely ridiculed. But now the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is looking to insert specific language about "terrorism" into the guidelines that determine how the Codes of Student Conduct on individual UC campuses are written. The proposal is to incorporate this language into the section on hate crimes.

The following was circulated in an email from Jerlena Griffin-Desta, director of student services at the Student Affairs Office of the President. These changes may be included in the discussion at the November Regents' meeting. The first point is particularly problematic, but note that the third almost as bad:

REVISED: Proposed Policy Changes to Address Hate Crimes

1. Terrorizing Conduct

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 102.00 Grounds for Discipline):

“[The following is prohibited:] Conduct, where the actor means to communicate a serious expression of intent to terrorize, or acts in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing, one or more University students, faculty, or staff. ‘Terrorize’ means to cause a reasonable person to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or his/her confederates. ‘Reckless disregard’ means consciously disregarding a substantial risk. This section applies without regard to whether the conduct is motivated by race, ethnicity, personal animosity, or other reasons. This section does not apply to conduct that constitutes the lawful defense of one’s self, of another, or of property.”

2. Sanction Enhancement for Violations Motivated by Hate

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 104.00 Administration of Student Discipline):

“Sanctions [for any violations of the Grounds for Discipline] may be enhanced where the victim was selected because of the victim’s race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, ancestry, service in the uniformed services, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer related or genetic characteristics), or perceived membership in any of these classifications.”

3. Discipline for criminal convictions

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 102.00 Grounds for Discipline):

“[Students may be subject to discipline, i.e., discipline is possible, not mandatory, on the basis of] A conviction under any California state or federal criminal law, when the conviction constitutes reasonable cause to believe that the student poses a current threat to the health or safety of any person or to the security of any property, on University premises or at official University functions, or poses a current threat to the orderly operation of the campus.”

Birgeneau and Breslauer on last year's campus protests:

[Senior Editorial Board of the Daily Cal]: Continuing on the idea of unrest and going back to protests, there was a lot of mistrust between students and administration and campus officials after last year's various protests. Part of that was objection to the way police forces acted during the Wheeler Hall protest. Now that the Police Review Board has released its report and knowing that there is a protest scheduled for Oct. 7, what is the course of action for campus officials now, on that date, and in preparing for that date?

Birgeneau: George, you can talk about this, in part. So we learned ourselves from the Wheeler Hall protest, and students will have noted that there was nothing comparable that happened in any of the protests after that, and that there was essentially no violence after that. Good example of that was the hunger strike which occurred at the end of the semester, which I think in the end was handled probably as well as it could have been. We have a crisis management team and we also have a committee, by the way, that's looking at the recommendations of the Brazil report, again, to help us in terms of how we implement those recommendations. I would say, sort of my point of view, probably the biggest failure on the Wheeler Hall thing was communicating with the people outside of Wheeler Hall adequately and making sure that people understood what was happening. And of course, things were not helped by the fact that the first serious injury was to a policeman who was out of work for two and half months. So that set a tone for violence, which was really unfortunate. George, want to add to that?

Breslauer: I would just add to that, that occupation of buildings is not something that we can take lightly or tolerate. And if that is the form that protest takes, we may have no choice but to - and if it is intransigent - use police force in as discreet a manner as possible, as nonviolent a manner as possible, to end the occupation of buildings. On Nov. 20 last year, we were, throughout that day, sort of haunted by the fact that there were 3,800 students, in a week close to final examinations, that weren't allowed to take their classes in Wheeler Hall that day because of that occupation. And to whom do we owe the greater responsibility? And this is something we're...

Birgeneau: The Code of Student Conduct is absolutely clear. Especially in an era of high fees, the university's ultimate responsibility is to allow students to take the classes that they've paid for. That's unambiguous in the Code of Student Conduct and that's the responsibility of the faculty and of the administration to ensure that students are able to attend their classes. And, again, we hear a certain amount of noise from people who are unhappy about certain aspects of how things were handled, but we got huge numbers of e-mails from students who were very unhappy about their inability to attend class or having their classes disrupted. Students come here because they want to be educated. It's our obligation to ensure that students can obtain the education that they've paid for.

Via email:

We, the hunger strikers of UC Berkeley, are calling out to all people of color, to our communities of color, to take a stand this Friday, May 7th at noon against racism and all the many forms that this oppression takes in our society. We call upon communities of color and all our allies to protest at locations of power, wherever it may be that you are best able to protest, whether that be an administration building or city hall. We must unite and let those in power know that we are standing together to oppose the criminalization of our communities. Let them know that we will not allow them to target workers for firings on our campuses through the misguided privatization policies of our campus administrations. Let them know that we will not allow them to target our fellow students that have stood up to them in past, that stand up to them in the present, and that will stand against them in future protests. Let them know that we are all one: workers, students, community members. Let it be known that we will not be divided.

The people in power do not think that we are a force to be reckoned with, they do not believe that our people will come together to oppose them. We began our hunger strike at noon on Monday and were met with abusive police tactics throughout the night. We were subjected to sleep deprivation, with threats of arrest if we were caught sleeping. The police would drive in circles around us throughout the night revving their engines and flashing their lights at our strikers as they huddled together for warmth. We did not break and will not break under these practices of torture.

Our administration told us that they would enter into discussions with us, but when we tried to bring in a representative of the workers, a member of our community, the doors were closed before her face. When one of the hunger strikers turned to leave in disgust, to leave this so called meeting, he was met with police force. One cop threw him to the steps twisting his arm behind him, while another cop knelt on his legs. We shall not be treated this way. As we sit here and see yet another hour pass of not eating, we now see that the police are coming out in numbers not yet seen, all armed with riot sticks...

As you read this know that students in a Los Angeles area high school have also begun a hunger strike in solidarity with the struggles of our communities in Arizona. They have decided that they will not end their hunger strike until we end the hunger strike at UC Berkeley. Know that the city of Oakland voted unanimously to boycott Arizona on May the 4th. Let us all come together and hold protests throughout the state, let our people in Arizona hear our cries of protest, that we will stand with them and not take this oppression any longer.

This is why we are calling upon our sisters and brothers, why we are encouraging everyone to protest and initiate hunger strikes at the offices of your campus administrations. The administration is afraid. They are afraid of our power as a community. On Friday at noon let us all stand together and show them our communities united in struggle.

In Solidarity & In Struggle,
the students on hunger strike at UC Berkeley

Rally Friday Noon California Hall.

I.

Like all regimes of law (or quasi-law), the UC Berkeley Code of Student Conduct corresponds to a particular spatial jurisdiction, within which it is considered to be in effect and therefore applicable [1]. What is the nature, and what are the contours, of this space?

To begin, however, we must take a step back and start with a different question. What is conduct? According to the Code, the university constitutes a “community of scholars” governed by “rules of conduct intended to foster behaviors that are consistent with a civil and educational setting” (1). Although this “civil and educational setting” remains undefined, what is clear is that the Code is aimed at regulating the practices of those who participate within the scope of the university community. This formulation points to an initial, reflexive reading of the term conduct: what is at stake is the way in which one “conducts oneself.” That is, the Code (like the law) presumes to produce self-regulating subjects, or rather, certain kinds of subjectivities that become embodied in everyday practices. Here, a second understanding of conduct as transitive verb, one that suggests directionality or purpose, emerges: to “conduct something” is to advance it along a determined path. The Code of Student Conduct, then, is an apparatus designed to produce (student) subjects that are simultaneously subject to and defined by the privileges and restrictions accorded to that particular subjectivity.

The Code’s target, in other words, is the student body. It is telling that the administrators of the Office of Student Conduct consistently talk about the disciplinary process as “developmental.” As a biological metaphor, development reads the student body as unfinished material, as pre-person, as person-to-be. Thus, the Code’s language of “fostering” the development of the student body must be read as part of a matrix of evolutive images and ideologies that ground the legitimacy of the Code and its Office.

But the student body is not only the target of the Code: it is also the jurisdiction of the Code.

From the Chronicle:

The interim suspensions are "remarkable examples of an abuse of University authority," wrote ACLU attorney Julia Harumi Mass to Birgeneau and Chris Kutz, chair of the Academic Senate.

[Mike] Smith, the campus counsel, would not comment on students' cases. But he said he agrees with several points made by the ACLU.

"I think we need to fine-tune the interim suspension part of the process, and we're doing that," he said. "We've already modified the gag orders" that bar students from talking with university-affiliated people, but he declined to say how it had changed.

Smith said he disagrees with the ACLU that attorneys should be allowed to participate in disciplinary hearings. Nor does he think that people sitting on disciplinary panels should receive training in due process, as the ACLU recommends.

"Where we need to be making changes," he said, "we'll make them."

(via occupyca)

(via occupyca)

Holy crap. Guess how Schwarzenegger wants to do that prison privatization thing:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state could save $1 billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico to house undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in California.

The governor floated the idea during an appearance at the Sacramento Press Club in response to a question about controlling state spending. His speech came on the same day that changes in prisoner parole and credits for time served took effect.

"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. ... And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education.

About 19,000 of the state's 171,000 prisoners are illegal immigrants, according to the most recent statistics available online. The state spends more than $8 billion a year on the prison system.

Aaron McLear, spokesman for the governor, said later that Schwarzenegger's comments did not represent a concrete proposal, but "a concept somebody mentioned to him" and he could not say where the governor came up with the $1 billion figure.

The governor's statements seemed to catch his prisons chief off guard. Matthew Cate, secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said it was not a proposal the department was pursuing and he assumed it was an extension of Schwarzenegger's call to privatize some of the state's prison operations.

(via Indybay)

Via our comrades at Davis (cited in the report!), James C. Garland, former president of Miami of Ohio, doles out some brazen advice to our own bungling administrative community:

However, carried to extreme, campus protests are disruptive and damaging. Occupying buildings, interfering with classes and administrative offices, destroying property, throwing rocks and bottles, and breaking laws are anarchistic behaviors that have no business in academia and must not be tolerated. Furthermore, when protest discourse degenerates into name-calling, harassment, deception, and distortion of facts, educational values are undermined. Students should not be encouraged to believe that taking to the streets and pointing fingers at scapegoats is an appropriate or effective way to contribute to the solution of complex problems.

Thus, when some student and faculty protesters, upset about tuition increases at the University of California, downplayed the complex economic reasons for the increases and chose instead to level unwarranted blame at the feet of the regents, the system president, and the campus chancellors; and when their naïve “solutions” were to cut salaries of administrators and medical school faculty, halt construction of new buildings, and tap into alleged hidden pots of money, they were substituting emotion for reason.

(...)

In my experience, the leaders of disruptive and confrontational protests pose a particular challenge to university administrators, because they usually are not open to reasoned discussion and they are unlikely to ameliorate their stance in light of new knowledge. Many university presidents have observed that, at the edges, protest movements can attract zealots and ideologues for whom the ends justify the means. Thus, in my own career, I have seen protest leaders fake hate crimes in order to stir up campus racial discord, block thoroughfares that were the only route for community ambulances and fire vehicles, and make inflammatory and untrue allegations about university administrators.

Such persons are difficult to reason with because they do not have a balanced picture of reality. They live in an anger-driven, black-and-white world of un-nuanced arguments, where it is acceptable to ignore facts and take them out of context, and to reject summarily options, tradeoffs, and compromises. Hence these words from a recent UC-Davis protest website: “The administration lies. The police lie. We are done negotiating with the administration, we’re doing things on our terms now: direct action, occupation, reclaiming public space.”

Once rhetoric reaches this stage, further negotiation with protest leaders becomes unproductive. Acquiescing to protester demands in this situation is unwise because doing so merely raises the stakes and results in more demands. The last thing such groups want is to fade from public awareness and be negotiated out of existence. For the leaders, the sense of camaraderie, excitement, anarchistic freedom, and the sheer exhilaration of their “movement” can become ends in themselves, supplanting their original goals.

(...)

7. Universities should never agree to grant amnesty to protesters, because doing so establishes an unacceptable precedent and sends a message to protesters that staging illegal confrontations are a way to accomplish their aims and that there will be no consequences for their actions.

Most important, however, is the following suggestion:

Again speaking from experience, the best way to defuse personal attacks is by not becoming rattled, avoiding responding in kind, and never failing to remain objective and even-handed. Presidents should also never, ever try to be funny. In the emotion-laden environment of a campus protest movement, an off-hand attempt at humor is guaranteed to backfire.

Better wipe that smile off your face, Birgeneau.

For the UC8.

UC Berkeley's MO: arrest randomly, allege serious charges with impossibly high bail... don't file charges. Lies, lies, and more lies. Also, criminal lies.

Also, zero evidence.

Don't give Birgeneau a free pass to shut down student organizing:

One need not agree with whatever happened at the Chancellor’s mansion to resist the administration’s attempt to co-opt independent student forces by soliciting their blanket condemnation of the incident.

Governor Schwarzenegger finally took notice of public education after the incident, calling individuals who were allegedly involved “terrorists.” Earlier today the Chancellor and his PR spokesperson Dan Mogulof echoed a similar approach, calling them “extremists.” Of course, we have no idea what actually happened yet, or if police provocateurs played any role, but it is clear that with this incident the administration and police hope to obtain a pretext to further suppress student organizing efforts. Students should not give it to them -- even if they disagree with what their peers are accused of doing.

Problems began last Friday morning when the Chancellor’s police raided the Open University, a beautiful show of a student-run university, at 5am, sending over 60 students to jail for the day despite agreements between administrators and Open University strikers to keep the hall open until the evening.

After the arrests, the University was quick to invoke its new doctrine of “preemptive” police raids, claiming that an advertised concert was actually an intent to violate that agreement. The University gives itself away here, though, because if protestors merely “intended” to break the agreement, then the University is admitting they had committed no such violation. Instead, the Chancellor himself was the first to violate it. Such a breach on the University’s part only re-affirms that the administration cannot be trusted in these matters, given its eagerness to shut down the student movement as a whole. Why else would it use such extreme punitive measures of raid and arrest and jail time to students in their pajamas, if not to send a deterrent message to other students?

One week ago marked the anniversary of the Free Speech Movement. Today, that movement is praised on a consensus even by University officials and conservative parts of the student body. However we should not forget that when that movement was still growing, University officials took strong positions against it, engaging in smear campaigns against the strikers similar to the one we see today. One need only visit the Free Speech Cafe at Moffitt Library to confirm this by reading the headlines printed on the coffee tables. What won out in the end was not conforming to the behaviors and ideologies espoused or tolerated by administrators, but strong student resolve against the administration and even against police attempts to arrest strikers. Today the very same people maligning the student movement pretend to praise the FSM, but their position is incoherent and does not actually show any regard whatsoever to political activism.

Students today face a similar scenario. The administration wants to impose a specific topology on the student movement, pressuring all students to affirm their belonging to one area of the map and not another. The governor has adopted the Bush language of terrorism to demonize the movement that his own gutting of public education created, and the administration has invoked the Bush doctrine of pre-emption to justify police raids and mass arrests even in the absence of criminal activity or evidence thereof. Students should not allow the administration to set parameters on discourse or action. If such parameters are to exist, they should be created by students with common aims and not by the administration when it exploits events like these for its own sake.

In forging a new language of political engagement and action, students will face vigorous resistance from the powers that be. Minor events like today’s, involving few students, will be characterized by administrators and cooperating media as flash points marking the ominous direction of the student movement at large. Incidents where police deployment was so clearly inappropriate will be let aside as incidents like these are foregrounded to justify future police presence and action against protesters. Everybody will pay attention to violence against the Chancellor, even as the Chancellor orders violence against student strikers acting well within their rights.

What gives the Chancellor the pretext to shut down the student movement, though, are not the actions of a few people but the reactions of the rest of the movement. If we allow them to shift the focus to these incidents, instead of fee hikes, program cuts, police brutality, and abominable mismanagement, then they have done all they need to do to preserve their own power. Even if a wrong is ever committed, students should never give the administration or police a free hand to do with the accused as they please. After all, no rhetorical concessions are necessary on the part of student organizers and activists to keep moving forward -- and they must move forward, because -- do not forget this -- the administration is comfortable not moving at all.

Update #1:

Building Coordinator Information Update #1

12/2/09 0740

Building Closure Plan

Sproul Hall and California Hall will be closed on Wednesday, 12/2/09, to the public. Faculty and staff employees will be permitted entry into the building upon presenting their UC ID.

For California Hall: Normal entrance procedures will be followed utilizing the East door for access/egress.

For Sproul Hall: Faculty/Staff employees will present their ID’s to the UCPD personnel staffing the 1st floor south entrance. This entrance will be designated as the ingress point for the building (DP access will be through the south basement entrance). Signs will be posted at other entrances.

Student employees for either building needing access will need to contact their respective department/unit to have a faculty or staff member come to the 1st floor south entrance to verify their accessibility.

We will keep you informed throughout the day regarding the on-going activities.

Stephen Stoll
Director
OEP/Homeland Security
UC Police Department
642-1258

Update #2:

BUILDING COORDINATOR INFORMATION UPDATE #2

12/2/09

This is to advise you that there is a possibility of disruptive activity in the vicinity of your building on December 2, 2009. Please be advised that the UCPD will be monitoring any activities that may occur and will work to maintain the safety of all in the area.

Your help is needed in the following areas:

o Early on December 2,2009

. Have some key managers watch University Cal Messages bulletins throughout the day. . If your building must be shut down early in the a.m., please have key managers outside of the closed area in the designated meeting location, meeting department staff and students to provide them with redirection information.

. Work with deans and department heads to identify plan for the day if the building remains inaccessible beyond 10 a.m.

o During the day:

. Fire Alarm pulls. If the fire alarms are pulled, key managers should ensure that building occupants leave the building, locking doors as they go.

. Report fire alarm pulls to UCPD, particularly any description of those seen pulling the alarms.

. Release of building following fire alarm pulls may take longer than normal. Manager will want to advise
employees to return to a set meeting location by a time specific to re-enter the building.

. Monitor Cal Messages for campus-wide information updates.

. Call 642-6760 for update information and concerns.

o Building Occupation.

. It would be helpful to take some precautionary measures and keep unused areas locked during the day

. If a group chooses to sit in the building or otherwise occupy an area within the building.

. Lock remaining doors to prevent further occupation if possible.

. UCPD will likely be with the group. Call UCPD if there are no apparent police officers present.

. Do not attempt to engage or argue with the demonstrators.

. Wait for police direction regarding evacuation.

. Call 643-6001for information regarding expectations with regard to the Human Resources.

. Listen to staff concerns that may arise. Reiterate that UCPD management of the situation will ensure safety of
building occupants. Be flexible with regard to continued employee concerns about safety.

Call 642-6760 or 642-3333 via cell phone for further assistance with employee safety concerns.

Building on this.