dniemeier

the space between black and white

Fights would not last if only side was wrong…

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The Academic Senate of UC Davis appointed a special committee and charged them with reviewing policies and recommending changes in light of the events of Nov 18. The report was recently made available to the larger campus. It is hard to reconcile some of the good recommendations with ones that seem to have little to nothing to do with the charge given to the committee.

For example, not unsurprisingly, the Committee endorsed the Reynoso recommendation to form agreement on rules and policies related to campus protests and recommended forming a police review board.

These were diminished though by what seems to be a critical loss of focus. The committee apparently spent a great of time discussing who they should recommend resign, a distracting departure from the Committee’s charge. Members voted on recommendations for resignation for all the upper administrators (splitting in favor, with one abstention each time).

Then, when they have the chance to really make a forceful statement, they split 3 in favor and 3 abstaining in whether the Police Chief should resign. Really? This police chief vote is just baffling.

There is also a statement in the report,

“We are particularly concerned about the [Chancellor’s] failure to take responsibility in the weeks and months that followed the incident” (p7).

I have heard this a lot over recent months, but never actually seen any data. I asked an undergraduate in political science to do some research for me. He reviewed all the Chancellor’s speeches between now and last November. He organized any statements of responsibility into three categories: 1) those taking personal responsibility; 2) those taking collective responsibility, and 3) those deflecting responsibility. The data can be found here.

His summary:

“I [had] the impression in her first two public releases she spoke more about correcting mistakes and that her decision to remove the tents were for the safety of Davis students. Then beginning with her address at the Davis rally on the Quad, she began apologizing more, talking about how sad she was, then brought up coming together as a community and creating a task force.

Then in some of her interviews and later addresses (through national news, interviews, and other speeches) she apologized far less, and focused more on reforms of the senior administration and police protocol. As well as shifting her attention to underlying factors of the Occupy protests (tuition hikes, the economy, and job market) and what she has done, and will continue to advocate on behalf of Davis students, for reform to the UC system. She also expressed that the school needs her leadership moving forward and declines the calls for her resignation. “

I charted the results of his investigation below, and I also plotted the times “Katehi” and “pepper” were googled during this period (indexed to 100 on Nov 19).

Draw your own conclusions from the charts, but what is crystal clear is that there have been plenty of apologies and lots of assuming of responsibility.

Lets move on.

speeches-responsibility

Heartland Scores…

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In case you hadn’t seen it, two days ago the Heartland Institute ran a billboard campaign that equated scientists and members of the general public who are worried about climate change to the Unabomber. The response was overwhelming and shortly thereafter the Heartland Institute claimed it was running an “experiment” and quickly took it down.

The really fascinating part was how offended they were by the level of intensity of the responses. Clearly, they don’t read the comment section in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal or even the Sacramento Bee, where rightwing commenters routinely berate those that post anything that might seem even remotely moderate.

short interpretation: Reynoso Report

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Fairly New Chancellor: We don’t want another Berkeley incident.

Experienced Vice Chancellor 1: Ah! So we use pepper spray instead of batons!

Experienced Asst. Vice Chancellor: I’m sure there is a better way! We should take our time.

Experienced Vice Chancellor 2: Thinking. Thinking. Let’s get them this afternoon.

Incompetent Police Chief: Men! Men! Listen to me. Please?

Privileged

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What does it mean to be privileged? I come to this post thinking about an exchange I recently had with another parent at my child’s elementary school. The school is a study in contrasts. There are very few students in the middle class – kids either come from fairly well-to-do families, or they come from the migrant camp down the road. In other words, there is a pretty solid bifurcation in student privilege.

I really believe that most parents at the school care about kids who might come families different then their own. But sometimes the privilege they enjoy makes it hard for them to see how their actions affect the very kids they would say they care about.

Today, I received an email from the parents organizing the yearbook asking for ‘high resolution’ photos for the 6th grade yearbook. I wrote an email to the teacher (I thought) saying that perhaps not all under-privileged kids would have access to ‘high resolution’ photos, or maybe even photos at all (e.g., adopted kids, kids in foster care, migrant worker families). I wrote that if someone would collect hard copy photos I could at least take these to a photo place and have digital images made (at my expense).

As luck would have it, I inadvertently sent my email (which also complained about the lack of awareness) to one of the parents, who responded with a scathing email about how much time was being spent on the yearbook and how the parents doing it should be commended. I was also reprimanded for my “tone.”

The real kicker though was this part of the second email from the parent:

“…I am sorry that some children do not have access to photos of themselves as babies, [the email] does state the photos can be from early school years, which would include kindergarten. But you can not penalize those who do have photos, and you can not expect [the organizers] to stop asking for them…”

Embedded in this response is the assumption that privilege lies with “permanent, intact” families, a theme I’ve seen before. Last year, there was a parent meeting in which we were asked to describe our our ideal community/school. On one list, someone wrote “permanent, intact families.” Preferably, those with baby pictures.