A System Failure

The UC Davis incident was the second time in recent history of higher education, when administrators and faculty alike place their self interests ahead of their students'.


A few years back, when an rouge prosecutor falsely change the majority of the Lacrosse team of Duke University, the reaction from the faculty and the administration was overwhelmingly blinded support to the D.A.  If only they had one eye half open, they could have found the D.A. had not even talked to the alleged victim, not even once through out the entire process.  The charges were totally fabricated with the only purpose to win his re-election.  Faculty and school administration grossly failed their students, but I haven't heard anyone to come out apologize in person.


Ms. Katehi is a liar.  People can see that because in order to save her own job, she has been coming to the national TV multiple times a day to update her accounts of the incident, with different theories each time.  While a few brave sole called for her resignation, the majority of the Davis faculty showed indifference.  The UC system president Yudof confirmed Ms. Katehi had his confidence' after over 75,000 people signed a pledge to ask for her removal.


As Steven Thompson put it at the UCDFA's site:

We have forgotten the role of the educational administrator: to set the tone of admiration that comes with the privilege of the position for the future generations committed to learning under our model for leadership.

What we all learn in the university experience from Chancellor Katehi’s refusal to resign is that money changes everything, so get it. Pride trumps accountability, so have it. And no matter how much the world hates you for your obvious failure at leadership, wealth and intimate connections will help you retain your dictatorial stance no matter how ugly you look to the rest of the world for the rest of your life. Chalk up academe’s Casey Anthony.

It is a system wide failure in the entire US higher education system, echoing a switch of goals from educating/enlightening to professional/job training.

Go Now Katehi

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi rejected calling for her to resign, because 'I really feel confident at this point the university needs me.' Katehi went on national TV, 'there are so many critical issues to be addressed and we really need to start the healing and move forward'.

Friday's peppery spraying peaceful students sitting in the quad demonstrated failure of leadership as the top official of a university. Her endorsement of obvious police brutality against students under her care even after the viral video flooded the Internet showed lack of judgment as an administrator. Her continuing floundering in pointing fingers elsewhere proved there was no moral value whatsoever on that body.

With 50,0000 signatures within 2 days over the weekend calling for her resignation and she still 'really feel confident', you can only wonder where does she come from?

Ms. Katehi was emerging from a national scandal at University of Illinois when she was picked for the Chancellor job at UC Davis. Her job offer should have been rescinded at that point.

Ms. Katehi put UC Davis in an international disgrace, but she has the courage clinging on her job. What are you, Ms. Katehi? Where are you from?

Ms. Katehi, you are a shame of an educator, and a shame of human being.

What language do you speak? Does it recognize a five letter word, "shame"? Or, here is an easier one, Gee..Ou..., Go.

Chancellor Katehi not all of the problem, but she must go

When asked about the calling for her resignation, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi replied that she did not violate any institutional policies, therefore she would not step down after video showed passive sitting students sprayed by campus police in their faces. Faculty member at the scene observed that for those refused to open their mouths, police pried open their mouths and then sadistically sprayed down their throats, all while a group of a few (a dozen to be precise) students were sitting still on the ground of the quad area at UC Davis.

Based on the videos now viral online at YouTube as well as many other websites, it is clear that those few students in protesting were not a threat to any one, in the least to the police officers in full riot gears, in Robocop costume as described by one bystander. In the video, police officers who were applying sprays were walking in a casual, if not joyful, manner, up and down and back and force around and above the sitting students. It is obvious to viewers that the pepper spray was used as a punishment. Through the entire process, students did not resist, or even move their bodies or fingers. They were sitting there, armed linked, when police officers spray on their faces. And they did not move when they were arrested one by one.

Many viewers of these videos were outraged, and called for termination of the police officer, Lt Pike of the UC Davis Police Department. As a matter of fact, a 9th Circuit ruling (276 F.3d 1125) in 2002 clearly outlawed police use of pepper spray against non-violent protesters.

However, law enforcing experts hold different opinions after carefully examining the same video. For example, Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters. Baltimore is not subject to California State Law, and is not covered by 9th Circuit in federal justice system. That being said, Kelly also was able to point out at least two instances when he found the student protesters where not 'passive'. In one case, a girl pull back her arm when police officers grabbed her. In another case, a boy curved himself into a ball on the ground. By police book, both warrant higher level of aggressive tactics (than pepper spray). In other words, by police standard, UC Davis police demonstrated not only high level of professionalism, but also great self-restraint even after being provoked.

At this time, it worth to review the video a few more times, to check out the two cases pointed out by Kelly. The trouble is, the Seagull, or any reasonable viewer would still have a difficult time to recognize any 'non-passive' movement of gesture of those sitting students, even after the hints, clues and helpful finger-pointing.

The discrepancy between the public and the police's view illustrated a bigger problem, as many referred to as a consequence of militarization of urban police, a topic with deeper implications.

Chancellor Katehi was trapped in her own media room on campus after a press conference late Saturday. Ms. Katehi refused to step down, as she 'did not violate any institutional policies', then refused to step outside the building, possibly felt threatened by her own students, whom she sent riot police in to get rid of from the campus the day before. Students did not threaten her by any means, they just sit in darkness on their own campus, three blocks long along the side of walkways between the media room and Ms. Katehi's SUV, in 'eerily silence'. When Ms. Katehi finally collected her courage to walk the walk, no sound could be heard, not even a cough.

Anyone who thinks she can continuously lead the campus must be blind.

As pointed out by the letter from the Davis Faculty Association, Ms. Katehi should have foreseen the brutality when she sent in the riot police on students.

Police were trained and reinforced daily on the belief that they were fighting the worse criminals in the world, thus must act accordingly. It is the same rational that you do not send in soldiers on civil matters as a soldiers' first instinct would be to pull the trigger. You can blame them, but you can't expect them not to be 'trigger-happy' because that was how they has been trained on daily basis. Ms. Katehi's decision to use riot police against students under her care was a loss of judgment and 'gross failure of leadership'. Therefore, she must go.

Ms. Katehi is a liar. Even after the video went viral, in an email to the entire campus, she insisted police action was necessary 'make the campus safe for everyone'. Any conscientious sole who have had a glance of the video would beg to differ, as reflected by the international outcry in the days to come. Ms. Katehi has a bigger problem than lying in public, which is her lack of integrity and her ingeniously lack of caring to students, a mandate for any person in the education field. Ms. Katehi may be an excellent researcher or politician, but she is not meant to be an educator.

UC Davis Pepper Spray

The Seagull was so disgusted by the UC Davis incident when police officers walked to a few students who quietly sat in the quad area in protest and started spray on them.

From the calm and measured faces and paces, in a sharp contract to the students who dodge their heads in between their legs but otherwise sitting still through out the entire process, the Seagull had no doubt that had these officers given an order to shoot they would not even blink.

The Seagull will never forgive soldiers who opened fire at students in Tian'anmen Square in the early morning of June 4th, 1989. However, the incident at UC Davis showed those soldiers were not the only evils in this world.

The UC Davis police chief later claimed the police was 'cut off' and 'threatened'. With so many videos posted on Youtube, everybody could see by their own eyes whether any police was cut off or threatened in any way by any measure.

It is an even chilling moment when the UC Davis Chancellor Linda PB Katehi brushed it off, in response to the videos, as 'questions about how best to handle situations like this'. In an email to the campus, Ms. Katehi wrote: 'We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.'

Shame on you police, shame on you Ms. Katehi, shame on you University of California.

And watch it again, check out that smirk on his face, when University of California at Davis police officer Lt. John Pike performed his job. According to Assistant Professor Nathan Brown who was at the scene, police then pried open students' mouth with baton, then ejected pepper spray down their throats.

Professor Brown called for Ms. Katehi's resignation. A petition can be signed here.

The incident on campus at U C Davis made all the arguments of democracy pointless, when ordinary people in China see peaceful students being treated this way in the US.

Michael T. Richter says:

I am an educator in a Chinese college. I have been teaching in Chinese colleges and universities for the past decade. In that decade, deep in the heart of one of the most brutal police states in the world, I have never, not even once, seen brutality from university and civil authorities that comes even close to what I saw from UCB and UCD in recent days.

I say this with a very strong observational foundation, I might add. In the year 2003, in the first institute I taught in (Jiujiang Institute, http://www.jju.edu.cn/), there was a full-fledged student riot—complete with massive property damage (a several hundred metre section of the school’s outer wall was torn down)—over restrictions placed on student movement during the SARS crisis. I was able to witness first-hand how the school’s authorities reacted. Despite being a well-connected official in one of the most brutally authoritarian states in the world, the president of the university went out, facing personal danger (students threw a variety of objects from their dormitory windows at him including filled thermos bottles), to *negotiate* with the students. The riots were brought back under control, tempers were cooled and the crisis brought to an end, get this, without the use of guns, chemicals, batons or even policemen.

Congratulations, America, you have actually managed to surpass China’s brutality—and make no mistake, the Chinese government is a collection of brutal thugs!—in this sphere.

I hope you’re proud.