In the hours following the pepper spray incident on November 18, 2011, Chancellor Linda Katehi’s first response was simple and telling: “We have a responsibility to maintain a secure place for our students to learn, and for our faculty and staff to provide the excellent education we are known for.”
Her statement continued, “Following our requests, several of the group chose to dismantle their tents this afternoon and we are grateful for their actions. However a number of protestors refused our warning, offering us no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal.”
“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,” the chancellor added.
Noteworthy in that response is not a condemnation of the violence as she would later issue forth in follow-ups. She learned her lesson, but her first response should have been rather telling.
It would take us nearly five months to learn that the chaos and missteps on the Quad were matched, if not outdone, by the missteps and miscommunications and miscalculations by the administration as they prepared for and then completely botched, in all manners possible, the ill-advised clearing of the Quad on that fateful day in November.
As Kroll now famously writes, “It was the systemic and repeated failures in the civilian, UC Davis Administration decision-making process that put the officers in the unfortunate situation in which they found themselves shortly after 3 p.m.”
Leading up to the decision to clear the Quad, Chancellor Katehi and her team made critical errors. As we have noted, they made the critical tactical decision to clear the Quad in the middle of the day – either ignoring the warnings of the police chief or creating an environment where the police chief was isolated to the point that she feared asserting herself.
This tactical decision was in the purview of the police, not the chancellor. The task force assigns primary individual responsibility to the chancellor for the decision to deploy the police at 3 pm rather than during the night or early in the morning. The result of that meant that, instead of a relatively small group, the police had to deal with a large and growing crowd.
As the task force writes, “No one can know for certain what would have happened if the police operation had been conducted in the early morning on Saturday, or a day or two later on Sunday or Monday night. What is clear is that the timing of a police operation is a tactical decision that should be determined by police officers rather than civilian administrators.”
Adds Kroll, “By insisting that the tents not be allowed to stay up on Friday night, Chancellor Katehi did in fact make a tactical decision: that the tents would be removed during the day.”
Driving the decision to clear the tents in the first place was the irrational fear of non-affiliates that we have discussed for some time. That the chancellor and her team did not know the true extent of the non-affiliates is somewhat forgivable. That they never tested their premises and even more, ignored the advice of Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro and, even after the fact, of evidence, is troubling.
Chancellor Katehi stated, “We were worried at the time about that [nonaffiliates] because the issues from Oakland were in the news and the use of drugs and sex and other things, and you know here we have very young students . . . we were worried especially about having very young girls and other students with older people who come from the outside without any knowledge of their record . . . if anything happens to any student while we’re in violation of policy, it’s a very tough thing to overcome.”
However, as Kroll notes, and the task force concurs, “These concerns were not supported by any evidence obtained by Kroll.”
As we also know, there was evidence provided by Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro questioning their belief that there large numbers of unaffiliated people in the camps.
The task force reports, “Assistant Vice Chancellor Castro explicitly challenged Chief Spicuzza’s report that a substantial number of the protesters at the encampment were non-affiliates and the Police Chief conceded that Castro’s information was more credible than the reports of her officers.”
However, the chancellor challenged the report of Ms. Castro, asking if she could “prove” that the protesters were mostly students. Castro replied, “I didn’t ask for IDs. It’s just from my sense of what I know.” The Leadership Team did not discuss the matter further.
We rightly believe that if the chancellor was going to use this as the basis for her action, she should have checked their IDs, not dismissed the advice of the vice chancellor who had not checked IDs.
Then there is the lack of clear legal authority that puts the entire tent operation in doubt and also contributed to the chaos on the Quad.
Kroll also questions the structure of the chancellor’s leadership team.
The key finding of the Kroll report bears repeating: “While the deployment of the pepper spray on the Quad at UC Davis on November 18, 2011 was flawed, it was the systemic and repeated failures in the civilian, UC Davis Administration decision-making process that put the officers in the unfortunate situation in which they found themselves shortly after 3 p.m. that day.”
Moreover, the UC Davis Administrative code makes it clear that the chancellor “is the person ultimately responsible for all functions of the campus community.”
Indeed, the chancellor attempts to diffuse responsibility as, “The Chancellor told Kroll investigators that she favors a participatory style of leadership involving consensus-building rather than an authoritative style of leadership.”
However, as the task force points out, it was precisely this “informal, consensus-based decision-making process” that proved “ineffective for supporting a major extraordinary event.”
As Kroll describes it, “The Leadership Team did not have a formal name or roster of members, met via conference call, and did not have an agreed upon method to communicate or record decisions.”
Writes the task force, “This structure failed to effectively support managing the events of November 18.”
The task force argues that NIMS/SEMS (National Incident Management System/Standardized Emergency Management System) protocols call for “a formal organizational structure and decision-making process when preparing for or managing major events. The process by which incident objectives are determined is clearly defined and recorded. The very purpose of this formal structure is to ensure uniform understanding and reduce miscommunication.”
Kroll adds, “The outcome is that key decision-makers on the Leadership Team held conflicting views on what decisions were made, when they were made and the basis on which they were made.”
One of the questions that has not come forth is the March decision for UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau be forced to resign.
On November 11, 2011, two days after their own incident, the Berkeley Chancellor said: “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers’ efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them.”
He added, “We regret that, given the instruction to take down tents and prevent encampment, the police were forced to use their batons to enforce the policy.”
Unlike the reports that have thus been released at UC Davis, the report at UC Berkeley largely, though controversially, absolved the university, police, and chancellor of blame for the November 9 incident.
Unlike the Davis protesters, there were clashes between the police and the protesters.
In a lot of ways, the Davis protest was a perfect example of civil disobedience, with force used on seated protesters who simply linked arms.
So you have a situation where the UC Berkeley chancellor is resigning at the end of the year despite a more defensible use of force by his officers, and UC Davis Chancellor Katehi is likely to be allowed to stay on, despite a report that shows a pattern of lack of communications that actually began a good deal before the fateful day.
A few days earlier, apparently, the police showed up at Mrak Hall in riot gear.
Assistant Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro told Reverend Stoneking, “The police were not supposed to be in riot gear and the administration was also not happy about their response,” and then she deflected blame from the chancellor noting, “The Chancellor is unavailable due to her triple-booked schedule to move forward her agenda of globalization and internationalization of the university.”
Finally, despite the shifting of blame and at times outright obfuscation, the chancellor, right after the release of the report, said that she takes “full responsibility” in the pepper-spraying case.
She said, “As I said in November and I repeat right now, I take full responsibility for the incident and I consider myself accountable for all of the actions that need to be taken to ensure our campus is a safe and welcoming place.”
But what exactly does full responsibility mean – particularly absent of any consequences?
That is a question that we will continue to ponder as we wonder if UC Davis even has in place a policy for dealing with administrative discipline.
The buck has to stop somewhere. The chancellor’s decentralized Leadership Team appears to diffuse responsibility enough to avert her having to bear the whole brunt. Nevertheless, the Kroll and Reynoso reports should be an embarrassment to the chancellor and the university.
It is hard to understand how this does not lead responsible people to hold the person at the top ultimately responsible for an incident that brought national shame and ridicule to this fine and esteemed university.
In summary, there is plenty of reason for detractors to ask for the chancellor’s resignation. There seems to be enough reason for her supporters to wish for her to stay on, that we will not see the chancellor fired.
It appears that she will get a second chance, but if history is any guide, she is probably on a short leash, and another blow up like the one we saw last November may be the end.
In the meantime, she has a narrow window to enact the kinds of reforms outlined by the Reynoso report. We will see what the next year brings for the chancellor.
This incident will either serve as a wakeup call to the chancellor or it will be her undoing. Only time will tell.
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/04/will-uc-davis-chancellor-be-held.html
Linda is not yet in the clear. In the coming months the pattern of donations to UCD will tell the story. If big donations fall, then Linda will go.
“If big donations fall, then Linda will go.” That’s been my take, since jump street. Katehi’s job title should be Rainmaker . She needs to conjure a deluge, but UC will give her the chance .
[quote]It appears that she will get a second chance, but if history is any guide, she is probably on a short leash, and another blow up like the one we saw last November may be the end.
In the meantime, she has a narrow window to enact the kinds of reforms outlined by the Reynoso report. We will see what the next year brings for the chancellor.[/quote]
And I see nothing wrong with everyone in this fiasco being given a second chance, since there were mistakes made all around, by the administration, the university police, the students. But like the Vanguard, I want to see institutional changes, that ensure nothing like this happens again. All the administration and university police need additional training (no less than 80 hours), as the students (the Davis 12) serve 80 hours of community service. To me, that seems a very “fair” outcome in light of the totality of the circumstances. What troubles me is that the professors who egged the protestors on will walk off scot free, which I don’t think is fair at all…
She lost me with her first post incident email where her failure to condemn revealed her support for the use of excessive force against students. Still the money could outweigh her failure if it keeps flowing. What is missing is that dealing with the dissent is the flip side of the money raising coin. The expectation that she would deal with dissent from employees over salary cuts and students over tuition increases had to be part of the job description otherwise why would she get the big bucks and work with the FBI on student dissent. The notion that she had a structure that obfuscated responsibility by accident instead of design is naive, the FBI doesn’t like to leave fingerprints.
Katehi’s situation is more delicate than Berganau’s because he was old enough to retire and she is not. How the university deals with employees that are not old enough to be put out to pasture will tell us what the Regents, who act as agents for the 1%, really think about repression. They obviously know that morally, student outrage over increased costs is justified, especially non-violent protest, otherwise they would have no problem using force as they did in the 60’s.
If they leave her in place the campus will live under the shadow of repression for the rest of her tenure. It will also call into question their own governance something I’m sure they want to cut off at the Chancellor level. If they fire her they do so for implementing policies they hired her to implement. They have poor options. My guess is they move her to UC headquarters as a fund raiser, something, she seems to be pretty good at doing and pay her lots of money until she can retire.
If that happens the question will be what is next?
“What troubles me is that the professors who egged the protestors on will walk off scot free, which I don’t think is fair at all…”
As I told the UC Spokesperson this morning, I think that point is overemphasized. Did the professors involve themselves? Yes. Did the professors advocate a position strongly? Yes. Did the students have lengthy meetings and discussions and go back and forth on issues before making decisions? Yes. The students were the ones who made the decisions, they are committed activists, and they did not do a damn thing that they didn’t want to do. In short, you are selling the students very short if you believe this was done because of or at the behest of professors.
This is the nth time that the David Vanguard has passed judgment on the leadership of UC and UC Davis. They’re stained with blood, they pour gasoline on the fire, they are the top 1%, they lick their wounds, they’re falling dominos, they ought to be fired. The main thing to understand is that this is all shouting into the wind. Because, coping with protesters and demagogues isn’t the main job of university leaders. The main job of a chancellor is to allocate resources and hire good people. It is on that basis that most faculty voted against asking Katehi to resign. Actually most students don’t want it either or don’t feel strongly about it — ASUC handled it roughly the same way as the Academic Senate.
Yes, it was a perfect moment of civil disobedience. Yes, the administration overreacted and turned it into that. That ship has now sailed. For one reason, because protesters have already handed Katehi and other people around Katehi a lot of second chances. They stayed on the quad, they invaded Dutton Hall, they took over the cross-cultural center, they interfered with US Bank, they spray-painted some hostile graffiti. None of it worked. It’s not like Martin Luther King, because his goal was to abolish unjust laws. Civil disobedience against reasonable laws and rules is pointless.
As for fundraising, yes it’s also important and no it hasn’t dried up. But fundraising from private donations is only roughly 5% of the campus budget and it’s not the main point either. The main point is to invest wisely in research and teaching, instead of investing in shared sacrifice or revolutionary overthrow.
This really is a just a skirmish in an epic war, one between Big University Power (BUP), represented by Chancellor Katehi) and Little University Power (LUP), represented by Professors Joshua Clover and Alan Brown.
Katehi will get another chance because BUP is judged on lots of things, not just a single incident, even one that goes viral. Katehi’s performance evaluation depends on how she does on the things for which she was hired in the first place. Most people blame Lt. Pike’s poor judgment for this embarrassment to the university, not the chancellor’s poor supervision of him, in spite of her “full responsibility” comment.
Clover and Brown will get another chance because anarchists always do, at least until they win or until the populace gets tired of their disruptions to society. They usually operate in ways that keep them from accountability, leaving punishment to befall others, although it looks like Clover got caught this time. Most people blame them, rather than the kids, because they “should be responsible role models.”
BUP’s success depends on how [u]successful[/u] the Big Powerful Institution (BPI) is. LUP’s success is determined on how [u]unsuccessful[/u] the BPI is.
BUP leaders have to spend their time and energy on assuring that lots of things work right; LUP leaders can focus their time and energy on making a few things go wrong, particularly if they don’t have much else (like teaching, for example) to do.
Katehi’s job always is in jeopardy. Depending on their tenure situations, Clover and Brown are not accountable, and they have a single, longterm goal (to get rid of campus authority).
Finally, LUPs like Clover and Brown operate from an advantageous position because the expense and disruption their ongoing anarchy adds to students’ cost of education gets assigned to the BUP leadership rather than them.
JustSaying — I agree with some of what you’re saying, but no, it isn’t a skirmish in any epic war between university powers. It’s a skirmish between fringe campus radicalism and common sense. Clover and Brown are not actually in an advantageous position.
I also have to say that it is unprofessional for faculty to encourage students to violate legitimate rules and laws. Yes, students aren’t robots and they make their own decisions. The fact remains that students hold faculty in high esteem and they do learn from faculty, and not just in the classroom. Faculty shouldn’t abuse that respect.
I have no itch to see Clover punished though. His legal problems are simply his own business.
@JustSaying: Please read page 56 of the Kroll report:
‘we voted the black block anarchists out.’
“But fundraising from private donations is only roughly 5% of the campus budget and it’s not the main point either.”
She seems to spend a lot of time doing it.
Only 5% plus how much from reducing salaries, spin offs, delivering students to private corporations through corporate deals and raising tuition and recruiting full ticket students from outside California. Its enough to make some people say enough! So you better be ready with the forces of repression when the aggie manure hits the fan.
“The main thing to understand is that this is all shouting into the wind. Because, coping with protesters and demagogues isn’t the main job of university leaders. The main job of a chancellor is to allocate resources and hire good people. It is on that basis that most faculty voted against asking Katehi to resign. Actually most students don’t want it either or don’t feel strongly about it — ASUC handled it roughly the same way as the Academic Senate. “
Of course all of it is shouting into the wind right down your list all the way to ASUS because she serves at the pleasure of the regents. They will decide in consultation with the President of the University. The question for the Regents is a cost benefit analysis between keeping her with her damaged reputation and all that it implies or moving her out and making a clean break. Interestingly the interests of the Regents may be completely different from any other University interest groups. We shall see.
It would be interesting to know how much of her time is spent fundraising.
Mr Toad – It’s true that fundraising is well more than 5% of a chancellor’s time, even at a public university where it’s only 5% or so of revenue. Still, strategic resource allocation is at least as important, regardless of the fraction of the fraction of time spent on it.
No UC Davis students have been “delivered” to private corporations. I have no idea what that even refers to. It’s true that every UC campus has a tremendous financial incentive to accept international students. That’s because out-of-state students help pay for in-state students. They do what state taxpayers no longer do very much. Without out-of-state students, in-state admissions would look worse: look at what’s happening at Cal State and community colleges.
As for salaries, either you want them to be high or low. As I was explaining in the other thread, protests against universities in general are often irrationl. One fairly typical pattern is to simultaneously blast the university for saving money and for not saving money. For the record, faculty furloughs are over. I’m not sure if any remnant of staff furloughs are there, but no one wants them. Actually a campus chancellor has fairly little direct control over salaries. What a chancellor can do is to try to reduce overstaffing, and Katehi has certainly expressed enthusiasm for that.
Your argument that faculty and student opinions don’t matter are both inaccurate and arguing in the alternative. It’s true that the person who really hires the chancellor is the university president (more so than the regents). However, I have seen votes of no confidence elsewhere, and generally when that happens the campus leader’s days are numbered. But also, so many of the reports and open letters since pepper spray day have talked as if faculty and students are all on the same side. The Davis Vanguard has had a lot of “students” this and “students” that. If someone points out that actually, it’s not most students, then you could sneer that their opinion doesn’t count anyway, but obviously that’s arguing in the alternative.
[quote]“Castro then proceeded to speak for about 40 minutes and the response ‘was dead silence’. According to Castro….They [also] told me [that Davis and UC Davis are] separate encampments because they wanted that student space and they had different issues than the city … they didn’t want the anarchists here. They said … ‘we voted the black block anarchists out.’ … I asked about non-affiliates. They said [they were] students, you know, there might be a couple of alumni, but then again I saw religious groups out there supporting them’.”[/quote]Grad Student, here’s what I found. What I couldn’t find is your point. My evaluation of Professors Clover and Brown is based on their actions and professed views.
Just Saying: It think it is your belief that Brown and Clover are anarchists, whereas GS doesn’t share that view and believes that the movement voted out the anarchists.
My view of Joshua Clover is more nuanced:
“After this announcement, Professor Joshua Clover spoke to the group, warning them about cooperating with the administration, urging them to take matters into their own hands and stating, “right now, we’re the law.” According to Wells, the activists “went back and forth” about what to do next.”
Now the cherry pickers like JR pulled out the first sentence there. But the second sentence is in my opinion more telling. My experience is that sure Joshua Clover and other professors have had their own viewpoints but that dismisses the college students too easily. They have their own minds. They challenge the professors. In the end, they do what they do because it’s what they believe in and no one is going to make them do something they don’t want to do.
Katehi appears to favor participatory/consensus leadership only when it’s
convenient: When Ms. Castro “participated”, Katehi dismissed Castro’s input by demanding “proof” about the composition of the protesters and by entirely ignoring all the rest of the 40 minutes of
Castro’s “participation”.
I was not impressed by her need to bring her husband along with her at public events after the incident. You’d think she could manage on her own.
“No UC Davis students have been “delivered” to private corporations. I have no idea what that even refers to.”
This refers to giving US Bank an exclusive contract for a bank on campus, priority location of their ATM machines and printing their logo on student identification cards.
“Your argument that faculty and student opinions don’t matter are both inaccurate and arguing in the alternative. It’s true that the person who really hires the chancellor is the university president (more so than the regents). However, I have seen votes of no confidence elsewhere, and generally when that happens the campus leader’s days are numbered.”
Probably true at least it was for Larry Summers at Harvard but UC is a much different institution. Do you think those no confidence votes happened too early?
I don’t know whether Clover is a “black block anarchist” or not. I accept him and Brown at their own words, that they are UCD anarchists. I do not believe Clover and Brown were “voted out” of either of the two demonstrations under discussion. David, you can see what you want about whether these two have any influence over the participants who are hearing their rants.
I defer to Greg Kuperberg’s knowledge about whether students respect professors–and my own memory of how I felt about them and their views. You suggest students aren’t paying attention to spokespeople like Clover and Brown. I’d suggest that professors like them are especially influential in directing kids’ actions when the professors’ and students’ political views are in alignment.
Almost no good has come from the Clover-Brown rhetoric about taking over the university, about becoming “the law here,” about “cops off campus” and running out the UC administration. Do you really think the student demonstrators and blockaders did what they exactly what their teachers did and called for IN SPITE of the professors’ constant sermonizing to the community or that it’s the result of some independent thought and coincidence.
The students are fully functioning human beings, but that doesn’t absolve the other participants (the professors) of their critical, influential roles in disrupting the operations of the campus.
If the professors can’t bring themselves to work with their university’s administion, why not find another job? If they can’t support the people who pay them, why don’t they just get out of town?
I, for one, am tired of listening to their anarchist talk that encourages demonstrators to break the the law instead of conducting a legal demonstration to make a point. They can continue their rants on-line for the kids who still want to follow the Pied Piper.
[quote]Almost no good has come from the Clover-Brown rhetoric about taking over the university, about becoming “the law here,” about “cops off campus” and running out the UC administration. Do you really think the student demonstrators and blockaders did what they exactly what their teachers did and called for IN SPITE of the professors’ constant sermonizing to the community or that it’s the result of some independent thought and coincidence.
The students are fully functioning human beings, but that doesn’t absolve the other participants (the professors) of their critical, influential roles in disrupting the operations of the campus.
If the professors can’t bring themselves to work with their university’s administion, why not find another job? If they can’t support the people who pay them, why don’t they just get out of town?
I, for one, am tired of listening to their anarchist talk that encourages demonstrators to break the the law instead of conducting a legal demonstration to make a point. They can continue their rants on-line for the kids who still want to follow the Pied Piper.[/quote]
Well said!
Mr. Toad – Honestly putting the US Bank logo on our ID cards struck me as a cheesy way to drum up credit card business and I was never particularly in favor of it. However, this is a small issue; in particular it has nothing to do with educational loan debt. If anything, US Bank would probably be happier with lower tuition since it would leave students with more credit card spending. Anyway, yeah, UC Davis “delivers” students to US Bank just like it “delivers” students to Carl’s and Taco Bell. BFD. It’s ironic to accuse US Bank of special powers of mind control over students that are not shared by radical professors.
The no confidence vote that I saw was at Auburn University, which is a public university in Alabama. Auburn faculty have a lot less power than UC faculty! Back then they had less still. The president tried to ignore the first no confidence vote, but that eventually led to a second vote that was even worse for him. There is nowhere to go but out in a situation like that.
As for the no confidence vote at Davis, frankly the faculty who wanted that vote couldn’t find a good time for it. They wanted to hurry up and do it before too much anger dissipated. But if the vote is too early, then it looks like prejudgment. It was a no-win situation for them because, actually, they never had a strong enough case. (Or only for the first 60 hours, you could say.) In fact, by the time the vote came, they had the lame argument that a vote of no confidence isn’t the same thing as asking the chancellor to resign. That was the best that they could do to persuade undecided faculty.
They are two voices among a whole spectrum of views.
Administrators are paid more for their loyalty than for their rather ordinary skill set. Katehi trusted Meyer to handle the situation. Due to his limited skill set and lack of common sense, Meyer failed. Meyer then pointed the finger of blame at Katehi. The logical step is to fire Meyer. Otherwise, on this fundamental measure of leadership, Katehi must go.
Greg You call it cheesy I call it insulting. At least with Taco Bell and Carl’s Jr. there is a choice. Did you want cheese on that sir?
Mr. Toad – Of course there is a choice with US Bank as well, in the sense that you don’t have to use their bank. I don’t have a bank account there; it’s as simple as that. As for the logo, the US Bank logo isn’t any cheesier than the equally unavoidable Gunrock logo, which was painted onto the pavement because of Vanderhoef. I was generally unimpressed by Vanderhoef, but I’m not going to hate university leaders just because of logos.
Greg: Your comment comparing US Bank’s logo to Gunrock shows you fundamentally do not get the issue involved here.