When University of California faculty members canceled classes last month to show support for union and student demonstrations, my students had mixed feelings. No one wanted to cross a picket line, and the university's 32-percent tuition increase had left them feeling angry and betrayed. But with finals on the horizon, missing two more discussion sessions would have been a disaster. Meeting at an off-campus pizza place for an optional Friday review session seemed like the right compromise: We could catch up on the class reading, eat some pizza, and still (in some sense) support the systemwide strike protesting the student-fee increase.
But on November 20, about 40 students barricaded themselves inside Berkeley's Wheeler Hall to protest the tuition increase and staff layoffs, and a standoff with the police grew to include a crowd of about 2,000 students outside. From inside the very classroom where my students and I normally hold a reading-and-composition class, the occupiers tweeted their demands to the administration (@ucbprotest) and spoke through megaphones to the crowd below, all the while bracing two sets of security doors against an increasingly intense police assault.
When I met with my students that afternoon, we were all a bit confused about what the occupiers were trying to accomplish. News coverage of the protest has emphasized the issue of the fee increase. But while the occupiers certainly had cancellation of the increase as a long-term goal, they hadn't mentioned fees in their original four demands, which were less ambitious and more Berkeley-specific (for example, reinstatement of 38 custodians who had lost their jobs to budget cuts and a promise that no legal action would be taken against the demonstrators). As I've learned more, I've come to understand the logic behind those demands. But when I met with my students over pizza, none of them had any idea what the occupiers were talking about, and I wasn't able to tell them.
What we talked about instead was the administration's decision to hand the situation over to the police at the outset rather than speak to or negotiate with its own students. If you've seen the photographs or the YouTube videos, you have some idea of what happened: In addition to campus police, the administration called in the Berkeley city police, the Oakland city police, and the Alameda County sheriff's department, turning a "just another day in Berkeley" protest into an ugly and violent standoff.
I was there most of the day, and what I saw made me sick. Students left with broken bones. Some students reported being teargassed or shot with rubber bullets. One young woman requires reconstructive surgery on her hand. I saw students, holding nothing more threatening than cameras, beaten with riot clubs. "We're nonviolent—how about you?" was one of the most common chants of the day, and it was answered with inarticulate force.
Some sort of administration response to the occupation was inevitable, of course. But why was it necessary to direct police violence against the students outside Wheeler Hall? (In fact, the university has called for an independent investigation of police actions and the university's own decisions that resulted in the police being called onto the campus.) The more the riot police surrounded Wheeler, the more students came out to watch. But the police treated that assembly of peaceful spectators like a clear and present danger, pushing and shoving back students whose crime seemed to be their very presence on their own campus. I cannot overstate how pointless and stupid it was. The police had marked off a perimeter around the building with crime-scene tape, and I have yet to hear the allegation that a single student ever tried to cross it. But when the police began to set up metal barricades, they ordered students to move back as they smashed the barricades into the front row of students. Students who didn't respond instantly were beaten with batons; students who touched the barricades had their hands pounded with force enough to break bones.
Eventually the occupiers were cited (for trespassing; a few had been arrested for burglary when they first took over Wheeler) and released. The demonstrating students dispersed, the police went home, and Wheeler Hall is open again. But those of us who teach in Wheeler face a dilemma: How do you hold class in a room whose doors were knocked off their hinges? How do you make literature seem relevant to students bruised by police batons?
Students have had a lot to say, and I've devoted class time to letting them say it. With some reservations, I decided that it was my responsibility to help them be as informed as possible, and I've presented them with facts that seemed relevant, everything from what the occupiers were demanding, and why, to more than I (or they) ever wanted to know about how the university's regents make decisions.
While I was originally hesitant to bring politics into the classroom, my students have repeatedly justified my faith in their maturity and seriousness. They're angry and engaged, but they're also critical, even skeptical, subjecting the arguments of the occupiers to the same careful scrutiny as those of the administration. It has made the classroom a much more interesting place to be.
But the course material itself has become one of the best tools for making sense of what happened. We've been reading Abdelrahman Munif's novel Cities of Salt, and have paid particular attention to an incident in which a Bedouin comes to his emir to get justice for a crime that was done to his family by one of the emir's functionaries. He first comes with open hands, sure that the obviousness of his claim will ensure swift action. It does: Not only is he sent away empty-handed, but the emir's men beat him and call him a rebel for daring to demand justice. Yet it is this very experience that turns him into a rebel for real.
I introduced the term "interpellation" to the class. And though I started with Althusser's classic definition—the police hail "Hey you!" by which a person on the street is transformed into a criminal-until-proven-innocent—we all understood that we weren't talking about just the novel. My students have been quick to make these connections. When we've talked about democratic accountability in Munif's vision of the Middle East in the 30s—the novel is set in an unnamed country in the Gulf where Americans discover oil—students have brought up the issue of transparency in university governance. When I've name-checked Max Weber and talked about modernization as the government's monopoly on force, students have observed that when police and crowds come into conflict, the police are presumed to be right. And as we've debated the legitimacy of nonviolent protest, I am sometimes not sure if we are inside or outside the classroom.
That seems right to me. It enrages me that the administration would expose its own students to police violence, but I'm proud to teach students who had the courage and determination to stand their ground peacefully as jittery riot cops lost touch with their professional responsibilities. But what truly reaffirms my faith and commitment to education is watching my students take something as senseless as what happened last month and struggle to make it meaningful. That's the kind of classroom I want to occupy.
Comments
1. anthrodocz - December 02, 2009 at 09:56 am
I was alerted to the protests as I read a number of early Tweets, in the comfort of my college office on the opposite coast. While I heard about many details from Twitter and Facebook, I got only carictured images through national media throughout the day. Many colleages here (some who were originally from CA in fact) still have no idea what went on in these protests or why.
Meanwhile, my first thought when I saw the tweets reporting that the police were being called in...then were getting ready to remove door hinges to break into the occupied spaces... was to wonder why? Why did an administration act this way as if on cue of some stereotypical '60s script? Is this the only script that makes sense to those managing the universitites? And then, apparenlty equally on cue, the outside police take their place on stage and follow their script. And of course the national news, when it gets around to it, will have reported it as "students confronting police in protest" ... Simply amazing.
2. garlanjc - December 02, 2009 at 10:48 am
Graduate student Aaron Brody is enraged "the administration would expose its own students to police violence," and that he was proud of the students who stood their ground "as jittery riot cops lost touch with their professional responsibilities." This kind of assertion highlights the challenges facing university administrations when protest demonstrations cross the line into illegal activities.
I wasn't there, so I don't know if the Berkeley police "lost touch with their professional responsibilities." However, I would observe that claims of police overreaction and "brutality" are standard protest rhetoric and should not be accepted at face value. Such claims are near universal in protest movements because they are seen as a way for protesters to garner public sympathy and to mobilize their rank and file.
While police overreaction does occur, it is the exception not the rule. Police in university communities are specifically trained in crowd control techniques and are well aware of the importance of restraint during volatile demonstrations. Furthermore, officers who engage in inappropriate violence can expect to be disciplined or to lose their jobs. The police are not, as some protesters assert, undisciplined and uncontrolled bullies who are able to beat up on hapless students without provocation.
Separating the wheat from the chaff is a difficult job for university administrators facing student unrest. I have proposed a anumber guidelines for administrators in such circumstances. See "When Protests Get Out of Hand: Advice for University Administrators" ( www.savingalmamater.com ) -Jim Garland
3. aaronbady - December 02, 2009 at 12:12 pm
One of the things anthrodocz brings up is the sixties resonance of the events. But what's astounding to me is how little Berkeley's administration seems to have learned from (or heeded) the experience of the Free speech Movement in the 1960's. Had they done almost anything but invite the police to smash the front door down immediately (within hours of the occupation) and arrest the protesters for the ridiculous charges of felony burglary (which have since been dropped), they might have defused the situation peacefully. But by refusing to negotiate with the occupiers until around seven hours after the first arrests (by Birgeneau's own account, they began no earlier than 3), they made the situation what it was, and need to take responsibility for that. Introducing 200 police in riot gear onto a university campus only escalated a conflict that became more and more violent as the police became more aggressive (which was something that administrators in the sixties learned, and which today's administrators seem to have forgotten).
Which is why commenter and former university president Jim Garland seems to miss the point of my article: the police were called in to deal with protesters *inside* the building, but they spent the entire day beating on protesters *outside,* who at no point did anything illegal or even close to it. This was the entire substance of my argument, and if he can't address that point -- and if he thinks that "I wasn't there, but let me tell what really happened" is an effective rhetorical strategy -- then I'm not sure what to say. Moreover, Garland's third paragraph has little or noting to do with the events of 11/20; police overreaction did occur (and I'm not holding my breath for any consequences to the officers since the entire administration has fallen into line behind them), and whether or not they were representative of police officers as a whole (which I never asserted), the fact that a police officers did "beat up on helpless students without provocation" is all I ever said, and to which he has not attempted to deny. Twisting what I said to make it seem unreasonable and shrill does his argument no service; he implies that I called the police bullies, but what I said was simply that introducing lots of riot police into a tense situation makes that situation into a riot rather than "pacifying" it, not because the police are necessarily bad people but because there are real limits to what the use of force can accomplish in that situation.
Which is really what is at stake in the argument: his presumption that the job of an administrator in that situation is to distinguish the good students from the bad ones, which the wheat from chaff metaphor nicely illustrates, is deeply telling. If you believe that the job of an admninistrator is essentially disciplinary, then it's not surprising that it would seem sufficient for the administration to simply hand over their campus to the Alameda County Sheriff's office. Police are good at separating the good from the bad. But if, on the other hand, you think that an administrator's responsibility is to his or her students, first and foremost, then maybe a metaphor taken from Matthew 3:12's description of damnation (the distinction between the wheat taken to the barn and the chaff which will be burned with "unquenchable fire") wouldn't seem an appropriate way to think about what it is that educators do.
But, ultimately, the police are simply not the central issue. The fault and reponsibility lies with the administration that called in forces it could not control, not with the police themselves. Students chanted at an anti-police brutality rally that "The police didn't beat us with batons; the administration beat us with police" and that's exactly right. The administration might not have wanted the situation to turn out that way, but I think the buck has to stop with them for the fact that it did.
4. davewines - December 02, 2009 at 01:15 pm
As a product of the 60's and 70's, I admire the students at Berkeley for reigniting the student movement. It was effective then, and I hope it's effective now. For very different reasons (foreign war vs. tuition inflation), students are reacting (and should). I doubt tuition inflation will tear up the country like Vietnam did, but it sure could tear up some universities if they don't start paying attention. Besides health care costs, tuition at univerities is one of the greatest areas of over-inflation in the last 30 years. I paid roughly $15 a credit hour in 1976 at a Big Ten school. That tuition is close to $350 now with fees. That's a whopping 2300% increase! I'd love to get that kind of return on my money in the stock market! And what justifies this? Is school that much better? Sure, there's more diversity in community and courses, but at what price? These are issues academe has refused to address. Higher education is out of control, period. Like health care, it may take sweeping changes in legislation to redo how we pay for it. I believe the ease of obtaining credit (student loans) was the primary driver. Schools did not have to be efficient as long as they could continue to get increases in student loans. In essence, the loans have become like health insurance premiums. With no regulation, providers charge higher rates and insurers (or financial institutions, in this case) continue to pass on their costs to the consumer. What would happen if we got the middle man (student loan company) out of the eqauation? A single payer tuition system? Maybe these ideas seem far-fetched, but they are exactly the kinds of things that need to be discussed across the nation. This is what students at Berkely (and I hope, other campuses) are rallying for. If university administrations don't want to engage in conversations with the people who pay them (in public universities, this includes taxpayers), then they should be both held accountable and ashamed of themselves. Apparently Berkely is a great example of a liberal university in its ideals, but very conservative in its administration. I would think most major university administrators were around when Kent State happened. Are we headed in the same direction?
5. anthrodocz - December 02, 2009 at 03:47 pm
Imagine if the administration had brought in pizza, and started talking with students. Imagine if they had invited students to brainstorming sessions with trustees about the state budget, about University costs, about what the students thought was the unfair firing of certain employees... imagine... imagine..
Oh, what the heck... Where's that old manuscript, "college protests in the 60's"? Ah! There it is... "call in the police."
6. boiler - December 02, 2009 at 03:55 pm
I have a hard time working up much outrage over this. The Berkeley students were not protesting an unjust war, or apartheid, or animal testing, or some other moral evil -- they were protesting an increase in their tuition, a hit to their own (or their parents') pocketbooks. The increase comes because the state is practically bankrupt and can no longer supply the subsidies which have previously kept their tuitions artificially low. Is that a shame? Sure. But to address it with tactics ordinarily associated with urgent moral causes is self-serving and silly. Occupying Wheeler Hall was the kind of knee-jerk radical theater that has substituted for political engagement at Berkeley for much too long.
As for the police response to the students outside -- it sounds like it was heavy-handed, and students may have been injured unnecessarily. If so, they should sue for damages, and the police should pay them. But trying to construe this as a violent political statement by the university is pretty far-fetched. If you want to see what that kind of statement looks like, look at video from the democracy protests in Iran, or from the civil rights protests in the American south. This sounds like a poor job of crowd control by a clumsy police department, and not much more than that.
If students want to seriously address the funding crisis in the UC system, they can engage with the complex policy questions that have created it. Mechanisms exist through which they can do that in a constructive and significant way. But if they prefer to lock themselves in buildings and chant "hey hey ho ho," the sympathy they get in the wider world is going to be limited.
7. neoconned - December 02, 2009 at 04:31 pm
boilee wrote:
If students want to seriously address the funding crisis in the UC system, they can engage with the complex policy questions that have created it. Mechanisms exist through which they can do that in a constructive and significant way.
- UC Faculty and Academic Senates have not been given an opportunity to address the complex policies questions, and the mechanisms you speak about are not open to us. Given that do you realistically expect students to have any option aside from "hey hey ho ho." the admin tells that if we don't like the New Order we can walk (and they bet that we can't or won't), and now it tells the same things to the students. Here's a throwback to the 60s - "Imagine if there was a university and nobody came..."
8. davewines - December 03, 2009 at 01:04 am
Sometimes the only way to get people's attention is to protest. Of course, violence from either side will not accomplish anything, but a few good sit-ins might help. Also, to me it is a moral evil when we cannot provide an education at a reasonable cost. What is happening in this society that education has suddenly become a big business? One thing for sure - if college administrations can't control their costs better, eventually students of lower economic means will not attend, as there is only so much they and their families can take on in debt. If this is the way administrators and policy makers believe is the best way to reduce demand for education, they will have to answer for declining enrollments. Academia is still very traditional and slow to adjust to economic realities. I suspect there will be tremendous growth in community colleges as students find their own ways to pay for higher education. Universities may claim that they are missing something by not going through the traditional four-year program being taught by top researchers in the field - but I don't think students and parents will really care about that for two years of mostly prerequisite courses.
9. jdm0007 - December 07, 2009 at 11:58 am
I find it interesting that it is easy to see the need for transparency in this Berkley matter, while the same people are not protesting the current US administrations attempts to muzzle any criticisms of it. The best examples are the US President's characterizations of the TEA Party groups as terrorists and his further criticism of FOX News. My own Senator called the TEA Party folks and those protesting the terrible budget overruns as rude and undisciplined. The founders of this country were certainly rude to old George. I think they were not rude but Patriots!
What I see here is that many University Administrators have become exactly like our President and his Chicago mob. It is a bad trend and I certainly hope that in the upcoming elections in CA and throughout the US we can truly see "Change we can believe in"
JM
10. cheriefmoses - December 07, 2009 at 02:55 pm
Nearly 38 years ago, around 1971, I stood outside on the campus of Case Western Reserve University after the end of my literature course. Students had staged a sit-in across a major street and police were stampeding them with horses. Then as more students gathered after classes and due to the demonstration, the police took off their badges so as not to be named, lined up with billy clubs, and after a student hurled an insult they stormed forward and created a similar war zone for us all. Students were bludgeoned. I was irrevocably changed from that experience that defied everything I had believed about my country. I moved to Canada a few years later and here I remain.
CM
11. citizendeb - December 07, 2009 at 07:26 pm
Funny. You could make a very direct comparison to the "occupiers" of Wheeler Hall and those deemed "occupiers" in Israel (commonly referred to as Palestine at Berkeley). All the Israeli occupiers want is to be allowed to exist in peace as a sovereign people with their liberty and lives intact.