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Flash: U.C. Berkeley Faculty Scheduled to Vote on UCPD Violence on Monday Afternoon--But They've Lost Their Email Access

By Richard Brenneman
Saturday November 26, 2011 - 11:10:00 AM

The UC Berkeley Academic Senate is scheduled to vote Monday on a resolution condemning the use of violence against students exercising their First Amendment rights.

From the meeting announcement:

Monday, November 28, 2011 – 3:00pm – 5:00pm
A special meeting of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate will be held in the Chevron Auditorium of the International House (2299 Piedmont Avenue). The Notice of Meeting and the resolution to be presented can be downloaded by clicking here.

We will be meeting to deliberate and reach conclusions upon a specific topic: The role of protest at Berkeley, the protests of November 2011 and events surrounding them including police and administration responses, and related policies.
In addition to the initial resolution, three others have since been introduced, and we’ll reprint them all.

But UC Berkeley’s email system suddenly shuts down

But before we do, we’ll like to call your attention to an email we’ve just received revealing that a critical mode of discussion used by the faculty members has conveniently broken down over the weekend.

Here’s what one faculty member reports:


The Berkeley email is disabled this weekend, at a critical time of organization and discussion leading to a special meeting of the Academic Senate on Monday. Those using berkeley.edu addresses are out of email from the morning after their Thanksgiving dinners (Friday morning) until the Monday when the Academic Senate meeting takes place. The meeting is intended “to deliberate and reach conclusions upon a specific topic: The role of protest at Berkeley, the protests of November 2011 and events surrounding them including police and administration responses, and related policies.” Some see this meeting as potentially leading to a vote of no-confidence in the Chancellor, Robert Birgeneau. In my personal experience, this kind of outage is not accidental.  

 

And here’s the notice faculty members receive when they try to log onto the campus email system: 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Technisource ~ ee
On 11/25/2011 at 4:00 pm PST
Modified on 11/25/2011 at 4:06 pm PST
Modified by IST Service Desk ~br
Posted in Unscheduled Outage
Outage Type: UNSCHEDULED OUTAGE
Date Submitted: Friday, November 25th, 2011
Outage Start/End Time: 0953
Groups Impacted: All CalMail users
Equipment: CalMail  

Description: A key component of the CalMail system has experienced a serious hardware failure that will prevent all account holders from logging in. Email messages within mailboxes are protected and incoming mail is being deferred. The database that maintains account holder information has been corrupted and must be rebuilt. That process is lengthy and will require extended downtime. Calmail expected to be available Monday morning, November 28. Please check back to the system status page for the latest information as updates become available.
CMR: TBD 

 

 

If nothing else, an email outage at a time when many faculty members are out of town for the holidays on the long weekend before a crucial vote by the Academic Senate is curious indeed. If nothing else, it makes organizing much more difficult before a vote in which the administration has a great deal at stake. 

 

 

Now for the resolutions. . . 

 

 

The first resolution, and a note from the authors

(Revised) Resolution proposed by: Wendy Brown, Professor, Political Science; Barrie Thorne, Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies/Sociology; Judith Butler, Professor, Rhetoric.  

Whereas, Non-violent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and 

Whereas, November 9th efforts by protestors to set up and remain in a temporary encampment near Sproul Hall constitutes non-violent political protest, and Whereas, These non-violent actions were met with a brutal and dangerous police response (see, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ&feature=share), a response authorized in advance as well as retroactively justified by Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs LeGrande, and 

Whereas, This is the third time in two years that such police violence has been unleashed upon protesters at Berkeley, with resulting bodily injuries to protestors, student and faculty outrage, a series of expensive lawsuits against the university, a tarnished university image, and a severely compromised climate for free expression on campus; 

Therefore be it resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate: 

1. Opposes all violent police responses to non-violent protest, whether that protest is lawful or not. 

2. Condemns the UC Berkeley administration’s authorization of violent responses to nonviolent protests over the past two years. 

3. Demands that Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer, and Vice Chancellor LeGrande take responsibility for and repudiate such policing as it occurred over the past two years. 

4. Demands that these administrators develop, follow and enforce university policy to respond non-violently to non-violent protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, and to minimize the deployment of force and foster free expression and assembly on campus. 

 

 

And here’s the note sent by the authors after the original resolution was first posted: 

 

 

 

 

Dear Academic Senate Colleagues,  

We write as authors of the “Senate Resolution on Administrative Authorization and Justification of Police Violence Against Non-Violent Campus Protestors” that triggered the call for a special meeting of the Academic Senate on Monday, November 28, 2011. 

We formulated this resolution in the immediate aftermath of police violence against UC protestors on November 9th. Since that time, we have learned that our resolution is being misconstrued in two important ways. First, some have misread the resolution as unqualifiedly defending the Occupy Cal encampment and as arguing that students have the right to pitch tents on campus whenever and wherever they like. Second, some have misread the resolution as proposing a blanket “no-confidence” vote on three administrators, effectively soliciting their resignations. 

Neither of these positions or effects was our intention. Rather, we are concerned about a pattern of violent police responses to non-violent protests (three instances in two years) on our campus, and we are calling on the Senate to bring such responses to an immediate end. 

On the first matter, let us simply clarify: The resolution has no position on when and whether tents and encampments may be permitted on campus but does maintain that tents are non-violent. 

On the second matter, we have chosen to exercise our authorial prerogative to amend the proposed resolution. The “Whereas” clauses remain unchanged but we have revised the “Resolved” clause as follows: 

Therefore be it resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate: 

1. Opposes all violent police responses to non-violent protest, whether that protest is lawful or not. 

2. Condemns the UC Berkeley administration’s authorization of violent responses to nonviolent protests over the past two years. 

3. Demands that Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer, and Vice Chancellor LeGrande take responsibility for and repudiate such policing as it occurred over the past two years. 

4. Demands that these administrators develop, follow and enforce university policy to respond non-violently to non-violent protests, to secure student welfare amidst these protests, and to minimize the deployment of force and foster free expression and assembly on campus. 

 

 

The second resolution

Resolution proposed by: Brian A. Barsky, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and Jonathan Simon, Professor, Law.  

Whereas, The “right of the people peaceably to assemble” is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States; 

Whereas, Section 9(a) of Article 9 of the California Constitution establishes that“the University of California constitutes a public trust”; 

Whereas, Demonstrations consisting of both explicit and symbolic speech are a fundamental part of the public discourse in modern democracies and have been an important part of many social movements both nationally and internationally; 

Whereas, Police violence has been repeatedly perpetrated against peaceful demonstrators on the Berkeley campus;[For example, at and around Wheeler Hall (on November 20, 2009, December 11, 2009, and March 3, 2011), Tolman Hall (on September 22, 2011), and Sproul Hall (on November 9, 2011).] 

Whereas, The repeated incidents of police violence suggest that the Administration and the UCPD and may have adopted a policy of preemptive use of force against peaceful demonstrators whom they anticipate may engage in acts of civil disobedience; and 

Whereas, The Administration and UCPD appear to have not followed the recommendation of the June 14, 2010 Report of the Police Review Board (“Brazil report”) to clarify the proper lines of authority and approach to non-violent civil disobedience on the Berkeley campus despite this confusion having been identified in the Report as a possible source of unnecessary violence; 

Be it therefore RESOLVED, that: 

1. It is the sense of the faculty that the physical safety of campus community members (including police officers), and respect for their rights of political expression, dictate that police should not be deployed preemptively with riot weapons and tactics in response to non-violent demonstrations. 

2. The faculty calls upon the Administration to implement the recommendations of the June 14, 2010 Report of the Police Review Board (“Brazil report”). 

3. The faculty calls upon the Administration to immediately clarify the division of civilian and police authority over response to campus demonstrations including requests for mutual aid to outside police forces. 

4. The faculty calls upon the Administration to make public the specific conditions under which it is prepared to authorize UCPD (as well as other forces operating under mutual aid) to use weapons and forceful tactics, including but not limited to batons, pepper spray, and pressure point grips, against demonstrators engaged in non-violent actions including linking arms and other forms of passive resistance to arrest. 

5. The faculty calls upon the Administration to announce that it will not authorize the use of such forceful tactics to prevent or preempt the formation of any “unlawful assembly” that is composed in substantial part of students, faculty, or staff, and remains peaceful and non-violent. 

6. The faculty recommends that if a demonstration turns into an unlawful assembly (for example, an occupation of a building) then the Administration should engage in dialogue, communication, and negotiation as the primary and preferred approach. 

7. The faculty recommends that if and when arrests are deemed necessary to restore core university functions, the Administration not authorize the routine use of batons, pepper spray or other weapons and forceful tactics without specific need to respond to violence by arrestees. 

8. The faculty recommends that following any incident in which forcible methods were used that the Chancellor should convene a public meeting with a minimum of delay to explain the rationale of the decision to employ them. 

9. The Academic Senate shall establish a Senate Committee on Demonstrations and Student Actions composed solely of faculty members to consult with the Administration, UCPD and students. 

 

 

The third resolution

Resolution proposed by: David Hollinger, Professor, History, and Thomas Laqueur, Professor, History.  

The Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate of the University of Californiahereby condemns the over-reaction of police to demonstrations on our campus on November 9; formally alerts the Chancellor and those who report to him that this incident has greatly diminished confidence in the Campus’s leadership; calls upon the Chancellor to institute special training for police forces employed on campus to deal with acts of political expression and civil disobedience in the University and, more generally, to immediately implement the recommendations of the Police Review Board (The Brazil Report) as issued on June 14, 2010. 

 

 

The fourth resolution

Resolution proposed by: Kurt C. Organista, Professor, Social Welfare  

Whereas, nonviolent political protest engages fundamental rights of free assembly and free speech, and Whereas, the campus has established time, place, and manner guidelines by which it encourages such activities, and Whereas, protesters may sometimes engage in political noncooperation which includes acts of civil disobedience – including the deliberate, open and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, and 

Whereas, there is a clear chain of command ending with the Chancellor, which implements training and deployment of police to respond appropriately to protests, and Whereas, campuses should exercise restraint in responding to peaceful protests and seek to resolve the situation through dialogue, and 

Whereas, we are outraged by the brutal and dangerous police responses against members of the University community at UC Berkeley and other campuses, Therefore be it Resolved that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate 

1) calls upon the Chancellor, EVCP, and Chief of Police to officially apologize to the campus community for the behavior of the UCPD on Nov.9, 2011 

2) calls for immediate revision of policies and practices to minimize the danger of excessive use of force by the police, and to better train the police to employ nonviolent law enforcement that respects the rights of nonviolent protesters 

3) affirms its support for the right of free speech and peaceful protest by all members of the University community 

4) affirms its strong opposition to the State’s disinvestment in higher education, which is at the root of the student protests. 

 

 

All of the documents are posted online here as PDFs.