Free Speech At UCI: Shut Down Access Roads!

Let's not cross the police! Police lines block access to free speech area

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Update (6:30 pm): Chancellor Michael Drake issues a statement saying "Our campus policies treat all speakers equally. We regulate only the time place and manner of speech on a 'content-neutral' basis, as required by state and federal law and university policy. This is true no matter how strongly we may disagree with the speaker or how antithetical the speaker’s message may be to campus values and principles" but Drake does not address the earlier report of UCI telling Jones he would be arrested should he show up.

Update (2:29 pm): Jones threatened with arrest if he shows up... UCI spokesperson says: ""We're not denying him access to the campus, just that particular area because it was already spoken for", while Jones says that "The Event Services department informed us that the entire university campus is free for public speaking at any time." Dispatch in Daily Breeze. See also OC Weekly update, where another UCI spokesperson said "Jones was in contact with UCI officials this morning, and was told he would be arrested if he returns in order to 'protect the safety of UCI students and the campus community'."
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It may be the biggest non-event in UC Irvine history. This morning, campus police at UC Irvine shut down roads leading to the flagpoles area (where speakers usually gather) and even restricted pedestrian traffic. All because, as UCI employees soon found out, Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who burned the Koran last March, was rumored to be speaking on campus.

Is this how UCIPD will react to controversial speakers post-UC Davis pepper-spray? Forget all the talk about the UCs being open to free speech. Let's just shut down part of the campus so no one can address anyone. If this is not content-based restriction, masking under the fig leaf of security, what is?

I first encountered this heightened state of security, it turned out, when I attempted to drive to my usual parking spot across from Langson Library this morning. The road was blocked and I had to park in a parking structure some ways away. But I was not allowed to walk on the road to the Library. Instead, a man wearing a UCI parking jacket said it was for "protest detail" -- and that I had to go through the student center building and walk another way to my office.

Chalk asks if tuition is paying for this police action

A 9:55 am email from a unit of the Libraries informed me that: "Without any advance notice from campus, the delivery access to Langson
Library has been closed off from Pereira. I don't have any information
at this time other than campus PD is enforcing this. Therefore,
deliveries (mail, vendors, etc.) today will be off schedule...."

A campus-wide ZOTAlert soon followed at 10:33 am: ZotAlert: Anteater Plaza, Ring Rd, flagpoles, and Pereira are closed immediately to pedestrian and vehicular traffic until further notice for security reasons.

This was followed at 11:23 am by a Safety Update: Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who made news by burning the Quran last March, announced he would be speaking in the area of the flag poles at 11:30 on Thursday, Dec. 1. Intelligence received by UCIPD
indicated suspicious activity that raised concern about the safety of
the event. As a precaution the area has been closed and no events will
take place in this area. Other campus activity is continuing as normal.

News photographers wait for missing pastor

Further ZotAlerts followed two minutes later: The pastor who made news by burning a Quran, announced he would speak at the flag poles today. UCIPD has intell of suspicious activity raising safety concerns.

And at 11:26 am: As a precaution, the area has been closed and no events will take place. Otherwise, the campus is open and operating normally.

As the UC begins reviewing police practices systemwide, today's campus police response should serve as an excellent case study of how not to over-react in a free speech situation. The police department has a lot of explaining to do. At a minimum, reveal what the "security concern" was and let the public judge. -- Daniel C. Tsang.

All photographs © 1 December 2011 Daniel C. Tsang

UCI Police Interpret When to Use Force

UCIPD officers begin arresting Irvine 17 protesters outside UCI Chancellor's Office in February 2010.
Photograph copyright 2010 Daniel C. Tsang

Three hours after UCI History Prof. and a leader in the UC Council of Faculty Associations Mark Levine and I met with UC Irvine assistant police chief Jeff Hutchison and Lt. Joe Reiss, where we were given a copy of UCI Police's Use of Force policies, UCI Chancellor Michael Drake released on the web copies of the same policies.

This meeting occurred before Thanksgiving, on Monday November 21. Right before leaving the one-hour meeting, I asked Asst. Chief Hutchison if he would consider posting the policies online, given they are "not secret".

In fact, the 17 pages of various use of force policies that saw the light of day hours after our meeting were just a miniscule portion of the 434-page policy manual followed by the UC Irvine Police Department.

What was given to us and made publicly available later were policies 300 (Use of Force), 308 (Control Devices and Techniques), which includes Chemical Spray Guidelines, 309 (TASER Guidelines), and 424 (Rapid Response and Deployment Policy).

Hutchison argued the campus cops would "not use" chemical spray for
"passive resistance," although he suggested that passive resistance is no longer passive if protesters link arms and refuse to budge. That's because it may lead police to use "intermediate force" to break people apart. But if there is no urgency to act, the police would rather wait and consult with other campus authorities, we were told. Cold comfort! Campus protesters will be surprised to learn that passive resistance (locking arms) can be deemed active resistance. Despite all the campus rhetoric about Free Speech, it seems the campus cops do not consider civil disobedience to be passive resistance if the protestors link arms and refuse to budge.

Drake also released a page of UCI Police Manual Policy 352 on Outside Agency Assistance, which we were not given at the meeting nor discussed.

I'll have more on this meeting, but one big question that is left hanging: Why not release the entire policy manual, and for that matter, from each campus police department? What is there to hide?

More soon...

UCI Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez on the First Amendment

Manuel Gomez in his plush office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010. UPDATED: To listen to audio, click here: .

Irvine -- In a broad look back at his student activism days (when he hung the Black Flag of anarchism in his apartment), UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, in the wake of growing controversy over the student disruption of the talk earlier this month of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and the arrests of 12 students, discusses the First Amendment on campus, and states that UCI's Muslim Student Union will not be kicked off campus. He also states that images on student protest blogs of UCI Police taking down leaflets announcing protest events is "disturbing," but he is waiting for students to file formal complaints with his office.

Gomez says he grew up in a poverty-stricken "barrio" in Santa Ana and was active in various struggles in his student days, including fighting police abuse. He says he understands the passion and quest among young people for opposing oppression: "I understand it in my bone." His verdict on his protesting past: It was wrong to distrust people over 30. We also discuss cooptation.

In "Imagining the Future: Cultivating Civility in a Field of Discontent," Gomez focuses on the situation at UCI as tensions were addressed in the wake of the Zionist Organization of America's initial complaint to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights over the alleged mistreatment of Jewish students. ZOA has since also claimed UCI students solicited donations for Hamas during a talk at UCI of British Member of Parliament George Galloway.

In the article, written for Change Magazine, as well as on Subversity, Gomez argues that hate speech has been upheld by the courts as allowed under the First Amendment. The ZOA more recently has called for a boycott of UCI in terms of donations and enrollment.

UCI has also sent disciplinary letters to the 8 UCI students arrested, including MSU President Mohamed Abdelgany, a first step in campus administrative proceedings.

In response, the various Muslim activist groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have called on UCI allow "free speech" for protesters.

Gomez's interview is being aired this morning on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, at 9 am (simulcast via kuci.org). He is interviewed by Subversity host Daniel C. Tsang.

Students & Workers to Confront Chancellor at Public Forum

UCI protest rally organizer Dennis Lopez, 4 January 2010. Photo credit: Daniel C. Tsang © 2010.

A public forum with students and workers confronting UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake on the privatization of the UCs is slated for Wednesday 12 January 2010 at 5-6 p.m. at HIB (Humanities Instructional Bldg) 100 on the UC Irvine campus.

High on the student agenda, beyond calling for a reduction in fees and end to privatizing a UC education, is expected to be calls for Drake to control the UCI police, to ban the use of Tasers on campus and to drop charges against Sociology graduate student John Bruning. Some students even want UCI to be made a cop-free zone.

If UCI police meant to silence Bruning, a student protest leader, by arresting him late last year on dubious grounds, it has done the opposite. Bruning in an article in today's New University calls for a ban on Tasers on campus, citing a recent court decision criticizing its use.

Though he is not happy under the spotlight as a student leader whose arrest and his being dragged off by UCI police was captured on video and posted on YouTube, Bruning is likely to use his trial -- if it comes to that -- as a platform to further critique UCI's administration and police tactics. Does UCI really want to provide him such a platform? After all, UC Berkeley dropped all charges against those originally arrested outside the Berkeley Chancellor's home, after windows were broken. At UCI, Bruning is not even charged with breaking windows, just slamming his arm against a glass-paned door to the administration building. I suspect the Orange County District Attorney's office will find there are no grounds to proceed to trial.

Meanwhile unnamed individuals have been posting on campus WANTED posters of Drake and Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, charging them with neglecting student needs among other undocumented allegations. The reward: Their salaries, the amounts of which are emblazoned at the bottom of the posters, which stayed up only hours before being removed by also unnamed individuals.

These and other WANTED posters remain online, on the so-called Communist Party Planning Committee site, targeting, in addition to Drake and Gomez, Sharon Salinger (Dean of Undergraduate Education), Assoc. Dean Caesar Sereses, Police chief Paul Henisey, officer Charles Chon, new Dean of Students Assistant Vice Chancellor Rameen Talesh, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Gottfredson. The CP Planning Committee is likely a parody of the name and the WANTED posters a provocative escalation of tactics.

The fact that these wanted posters with salary numbers haven't been widely posted on campus perhaps suggests a hesitancy among the protesters, who are by no means a unified whole. We link them here to inform the public.

As for the targets, just to mention two more: Salinger is the UCI administrator who wiped out a key student services resource, SAAS, the Student Academic Advancement Services, and subsequently asserted on KUCI's Subversity show that the services, which were partially refunded by the U.S. Department of Education, would continue under another name, although the former SAAS director and staff were let go.

Talesh in a letter in today's New University, while declaring UCI's commitment to protect free speech rights, argues there is a "time and place" for student protests, but not when they disrupt classes.

The text of the student/worker endorsed statement, distributed via email originally yesterday, follows:

Dear Campus Community:

In the past 3 months, we've seen changes and decisions made at the UC system that many of us wouldn't have dreamed of. Undergraduate fees have risen 32%, faculty, staff, and campus workers have been laid off and furloughed, classes have been cut, and the library hours have been reduced. To add insult to injury, essential services on campus have also been terminated, such as Student Academic Advancement Services (which ran Summer Bridge), Counseling Center staff has been cut, and financial aid has been decreasing. We all have questions about our futures in the UC system: How will the cuts affect us? How will we continue to afford UCI? What job prospects will we have after we graduate?

In response to the growing discontent and anger over the budget cuts on campuses across the state, a broad coalition of students has organized a Public Forum at UCI to discuss the important changes affecting our university. Chancellor Drake has been invited to attend and participate, which he has agreed to do, along with other key administrators at UCI. We urge all of the UCI community -- students, workers, faculty, staff -- to attend and raise questions about the decisions being made on our behalf for the future of the University of California and public education more generally.

Sponsored by:
Black Student Union
American Indian Student Association
Asian Pacific Student Association
MEChA
Alyansa ng mga Kababayan
Radical Student Union
Worker Student Alliance
Muslim Student Union
Women and Criminal Justice Network
Incite Magazine
Defend UCI
University Council-AFT, Local 2226
AFSCME, Local 3299
UPTE
Alud, The Graduate Student Journal of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese