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Health & Fitness

Not the UC Davis I know

Divergent viewpoints were always accepted at UC Davis. But last week's violence show the culture of dissent and openness that once existed are at risk.

Several years ago when I was trying to decide where to go to college, UC Davis seemed like the perfect fit for me. The university, like the bucolic town that it calls home, was welcoming, safe and nurturing. Both the city of Davis and the university shared many of their best qualities with Petaluma, and perhaps that is part of the reason why I had such a positive experience there and why I have so many good memories of Davis. I once felt that I would always feel at home in Davis, that the welcoming atmosphere ingrained in the land, and that it would always hold the same significance for me.

Sadly, I was wrong. I no longer know my alma mater.

UC Davis has become a stranger to me. Surely the water towers still stand, and the trees in the University Arboretum are probably showing the last of the fall colors. Right now hurried students are probably busily cycling to and from end of the quarter cram sessions in the crisp Yolo County air. I am sure that everything appears normal at UC Davis. However it is apparent that some insidious changes have taken place since I graduated. Changes so subtle that they probably went unrecognized by the campus community until last week.

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George W. Bush was the President, and we were in the first years of the Iraq war when I was a student at UC Davis. The campus was alive with protest and political speech. The Davis College Republicans would routinely counter protest during anti-war rallies. Pro-choice and pro-life groups would both hold protests on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Student clubs espousing divergent viewpoints would simultaneously hold outdoor tabling sessions on a daily basis. At times the rhetoric was heated, but all of this political speech was nonviolent and for the most part the University seemed committed to preserving an open forum for constitutionally protected speech

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Obviously that is no longer the case. The shocking videos of a UC Davis campus police officer pepper spraying passive, non-violent protestors at point-blank range shows that the university is no longer interested in insuring that public space on campus is open for students to exercise their First Amendment rights. The disproportionate, violent methods of “crowd control” that the administration and university police department chose to employ against the students prove this. According to Dr. Nathan Brown, Assistant Professor of English at UC Davis, whose scathing open letter to Chancellor Linda Katehi can be read here, when the students tried to protect themselves from the burning pepper spray, campus police officers, “forced open their mouths and pepper sprayed down their throats.”

I doubt that the University ever issued a policy statement, or a warning, to the campus community outlining how perceived threats are to be dealt with by the UC Davis administration or the campus police. Now they will never have to. When citizens observe law enforcement utilizing brutal tactics against protestors, peaceful or otherwise, it tends to have a chilling effect. The millions of people who watch the videos of the police brutiality at UC Davis, and see how nonviolent protestors are are dispersed with pepper spray and bludgeoning, learn to fear violent retribution for exercising their rights. 

Ironically, it was under the guise of campus safety that the UC Davis administration authorized police dressed in riot gear and wielding clubs to break up a student protest. I fail to see whose safety was protected. Certainly not the safety of the student protesters or the safety of the many observers who stood near the protest documenting the events with countless cell phone cameras. Frankly one of the few things that I’ve been able to glean from watching the many civilian accounts of the events on the UC Davis quad is that it is not safe to engage in controversial or otherwise unpopular speech. It is not safe to engage in civil disobedience.

Things have changed since I was a student at UC Davis. I do not like it. As such, this once-proud Aggie will do the only thing she can do to protest the university’s treatment of the student body on November 18th: I will not support my alma mater until the individuals responsible are held accountable for their actions, and the university formulates a new set of protocols to deal with nonviolent protest.

I’ll always cherish the many fond memories I have of my undergraduate years at UC Davis, but not more than I cherish free speech and peaceful public assembly. 

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