

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi (Chancellor of UC Davis) - lambada
http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/

======
_delirium
The overuse of chemical agents is really pretty strange. I can maybe see using
them in extreme situations; if people are in the process of burning down a
building by throwing molotov cocktails through the windows, dispersing them
with tear gas might be the only real option. But using chemical agents on
people sitting on a lawn seems like a pretty poor balancing of force versus
danger/urgency.

One question is whether this is primarily a matter of bad policy, or of bad
training. Are police officers using pepper spray, for example, in situations
that policy does not call for, due to some hotheads being angry at protestors?
Or are they acting properly according to the policy, so it's the
policy/superiors who are at fault?

~~~
hugh3
If you're in a situation where a police officer is entitled to arrest you, but
he physically can't arrest you because you're sitting on the ground with your
arms linked with somebody else, then the police officer is entitled to use
reasonable force in order to arrest you. Pepper spray is the least dangerous
way (to you) to do this -- all other possibilities run the risk of breaking
your arms.

I'm _really_ sick of this game, though. The game where protestors deliberately
work as hard as they possibly can in order to provoke a police response, and
then whine about the police response. This is a game the police can't possibly
win, and the protestors know it; that's why they play it. If the police
_don't_ respond, then the protestors will just escalate their douchiness until
they do.

I know this game, it's the game I used to play with my older brother. Harass
him until he hits me, and then go whine to my parents. It was pretty douchey
of me, but hey, I was a kid. These kids are supposed to be grown up, what's
their excuse?

~~~
_delirium
> It's called being a complete cunt to your fellow human beings

I can certainly agree that the policeman in question fits that description.
But I'm sure he was "just following orders", which included the _very_ urgent
task of clearing some random sidewalk in a park. Although _who_ is the bigger
piece of shit depends in part on whether he was indeed ordered to do it, or
was simply a poorly trained hothead acting without authorization (the police
are sadly not empty of of power-hungry assholes who will use any excuse to
"teach people a lesson", though I don't think such bad apples are quite as
common as some people allege).

Frankly, I'm sick of people such as yourself cheerleading violence against
people you don't like, WWF-style, because you're fighting some sort of culture
war against the imagined enemy of hippiedom, and feel that you can use any
means necessary to fight it, including violent ones. That sort of playground
bullshit is to be expected in kids, but you're grown up, so what's your excuse
for not applying some rational analysis to the pros/cons of using violence?

Actually, in the kid example, I blame the kid who punched there too. Poor
impulse control isn't a justification for violence, and kids like that, if
that behavior isn't fixed, often grow up to be violent adults who get
"provoked" into fights, justifying it, just like the kid, by blaming someone
else for "forcing" them to throw a punch in the bar.

~~~
hugh3
And comments like these are the reason that this story should never have been
submitted, and hopefully will be removed asap.

~~~
_delirium
If you don't want to see intemperate comments calling people cunts, it's in
_your_ power to stop that by not posting them. Nobody's even making you click
on the story or comments at all!

~~~
VMG
_Nobody's even making you click on the story or comments at all!_

So why have any submission guidelines at all then?

~~~
JanezStupar
To minimize the amount of unwanted comments.

After all these are submission GUIDELINES - not submission LAW.

And between startup hustle, scala and lolcats there is a wide array of
possibilities. When an unwanted submission appears it is either A) Ignored or
B) Upvoted.

If you don't agree with submission you can flag it and after enough members of
community have done so it will go away.

There is really no need for some of us going around and act rude towards
people who have different tastes/priorities.

This kind of holistic argument contributes way more noise than the stories
themselves.

------
adnam
Her apparent response:

[http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/messages/2011/protest_action_1...](http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/messages/2011/protest_action_111811.html)

~~~
jfager
That is crazy Orwellian. "We have an obligation to your parents to keep you
safe, so we're going to beat you with batons and shoot pepper spray down your
throats".

~~~
inuhj
It's especially bizarre given that the majority of college students are 18+.
What obligation do you have to the parents of a 20 year old? Your obligations
are solely to your students.

~~~
hugh3
In theory, college students are adults.

These kids, though, don't seem to be acting like it. They think they're
playing a game.

~~~
dbingham
No, they don't. They are fully aware of what they are doing, the history
behind it, and the possible consequences of their actions. They are doing it
because it is the right thing to do. In a time such as this, where the only
voice you are left with is protest, then protest is the right way to use your
voice.

------
tmpacct123
It's interesting that the letter doesn't raise objections about the way that
police used the pepper spray guns. Presumably they are given guidance on how
they are allowed to use them that does not include forcing it into a persons
mouth and spraying it down their throat.

------
ivan_ah
I though cops //theoretically// weren't allowed on campus?

It seems that an exception to the rule is if the university calls them.

Last week[1] students at my university (in Montreal), went into the
Administration building and tried to occupy the offices of the principal. This
is, apparently[2], something we have a tradition of doing every time someone
tries to increase the tuition fees. Long story short, campus security didn't
know what to do, there was also a bit of a hostage situation[3] going on, and
so the cops were called. (By whom?) The the cops called the riot squad and
then batons and pepper spray ensued.

Speaking of which, does anybody know what the cops spray people with? If you
have a bottle of water with you and you wash your eyes are you OK? Or do you
need another solution?

[1] [http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/riot-police-at-
mcgill-1.26...](http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/riot-police-at-
mcgill-1.2698850?compArticle=yes) [2] <http://news-
archive.mcgill.ca/w97/salaries.htm> [3] www.mcgilltribune.com/opinion/we-too-
are-mcgill-1.2707960?compArticle=yes

~~~
_delirium
This varies by country; some countries have laws keeping police off campus,
for various historical reasons. Some date back to the semi-independence of
medieval universities, which weren't supposed to be harassed by the local
authorities; others are more recent laws, e.g. Greece's "university asylum"
law was a reaction to police raids on campuses by the '67-'74 military
dictatorship.

The U.S. doesn't have any particular no-police-on-campus rules, although they
_do_ have an interesting arrangement in many cases, including this one, where
the campus police have been upgraded to "real" police, and non-university
police are not usually allowed on campus, because it's not in their
jurisdiction. How they relate to the university administration tends to be
complex, but the goal is to make some mixture of a regular police force and a
campus-security force: more "official" than only a campus security force, but
university-controlled, like a campus-security force would be, as opposed to
having city-controlled police on campus.

It _usually_ actually works pretty well, I think. Incidents like this are a
lot less common than they might be with a regular police force, and many
campus police have a geniune interest in keeping campuses calm and defusing
confrontations. Even in this video, you can see that only one cop is really
acting out of line, and many of the others look a bit uncomfortable with
what's going on (especially when he's taking other cops' bottles of pepper
spray to go back for more).

------
mikescar
The strongest feeling that this open letter communicates is how strongly the
author views himself. Starting with "I am an asset...you are not" and peppered
throughout with "I [verb]" statements, this just reads as an exercise in self-
promotion.

There must be plenty of support with other faculty, where a simple and
coherent statement could be made as a group. But the author apparently felt
the need to jump out ahead of that with an open letter. How revolutionary.

~~~
dmak
It's because of his role in Davis that makes this more credible. It shows how
much he just as much, if not less, in to the UC Davis community. It can mean
more if it was made as a group, but other faculty may not have agreed with
everything he has said. Anyways, I don't see how can you even say this is a
self-promotion.

------
hugh3
Very very very very very very very flagged.

Seriously, this got 76 upvotes? What do you think this is?

------
VMG
Again, very interesting story, but off-topic:
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic._

On reddit, I'd be in /r/politics.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
I find the comments within stories, that have nothing more to add than "This
is Offtopic" way more distracting than the stories themselves, even if they
are offtopic.

So I see this story, it seems offtopic but intriguing nonetheless. I see there
are comments, I click on comments. And what do I get? A gang of self righteous
internet citizens informing me that I am not interested in this story and/or
debate.

Thank you very much, may I be in charge for a while?

If you have a problem with story, go and flag it. Preferably just ignore it -
it will go away on its own. But don't go around pointing it out. Else you
might be caught off guard by the shitstorm of down votes that is going to hit
you.

Attitudes like this also belong on /r/whatever.

~~~
hugh3
It's not a question of whether it's interesting, it's a question of whether
it's on-topic. Certain things are off-topic, because they have a tendency to
invite bad comments which drive out good discussion.

I'm interested in pictures of cute cats and big tits, as well, but they're not
suitable subjects for this site either.

~~~
JanezStupar
And your bitching all over this thread is off topic on all the counts.

Especially the topic of this thread, which is not "What is or is not on topic
on HN".

GET OFF MY LAWN!

