Faculty back Katehi in confidence vote

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. Enterprise file photo

By better than a two-to-one margin, the UC Davis Academic Senate voted down a statement of no-confidence in Chancellor Linda Katehi following the November pepper-spraying of protesters on campus.

The two-week online vote ended Friday, with 312 faculty members backing the statement of no-confidence and 697 opposed. A total of 2,693 active and emeritus faculty were eligible to vote.

In a separate measure, approved 586-408, faculty voted to:

* Condemn “both the dispatch of police in response to nonviolent protests and the use of excessive force that led to the deplorable pepper-spraying events of Nov. 18.”;

* Oppose “all violent police responses” to nonviolent protests on campus;

* Demand the police be deployed against protesters “only after all reasonable administrative efforts to bridge differences have been exhausted,” including consultation with the Academic Senate’s leader; and

* Accept Katehi’s “good-faith apology” and “express confidence” in her “leadership and efforts to place UC Davis among the top five public universities in the nation.”

A third measure opposing police use of force against nonviolent protesters and the use of police until all other efforts have failed also passed, 635-343.

Katehi did not comment publicly on Friday’s results.

A University of California spokesman said President Mark Yudof was “gratified” by the results. In a statement released earlier in the week, Yudof said Katehi had his “full support.”

“In response to recent protest-related controversies, the chancellor has demonstrated both her integrity as a leader and her personal empathy for all members of the UC Davis community,” Yudof said.

“It was Chancellor Katehi who, rightfully, first requested that the Office of President organize an independent and in-depth investigation of the incident in question.”

About 35 university police officers cleared a small Occupy UC Davis encampment Nov. 18. About a dozen protesters were pepper-sprayed after they sat down and linked arms on a sidewalk in front of officers. Videos of the scene quickly went viral — one has attracted more than 2.4 million views on YouTube.

Another nine students and one alumnus were arrested that afternoon. The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office chose not to file charges against them, citing insufficient evidence and a request from the campus not to prosecute.

Calls for the chancellor’s resignation came quickly in the hours after the pepper-spraying, including from a number of professors; the board of the 112-member Davis Faculty Association; and from more than 114,000 people who signed an online petition.

Katehi weathered the initial storm, which included another viral video, this one viewed more than 1 million times, that showed her walking to her car after a Nov. 19 press conference with protesters watching in silence.

As Katehi held a series of town hall-style meetings with students, faculty and staff, dozens of professors signed a letter saying they would resist acting too quickly, while a smaller number demanded that she step down.

Statistics professor Francisco Samaniego was among those who posted statements urging his colleagues to oppose the no-confidence measure, calling it “rash and ill-conceived” when investigations had not been completed.

“I have seen no evidence that the chancellor suggested, ordered or anticipated the pepper spray incident…,” Samaniego wrote. “A resolution that censures the chancellor is, at the very least, premature.

“At worst, it is a rush to judgment that is unfair to a person who has shown, at all other times, nothing but passion, dedication and sound and creative vision in leading the campus forward in very difficult times.”

Philosophy professor David Copp urged his colleagues to approve the measure.

“A wise leader would not have ordered the police to act against nonviolent demonstrators,” he wrote.

While the chancellor has apologized repeatedly and taken responsibility for what happened, she has simultaneously sought to distance herself from the decision to use force.

Specifically, Katehi has said that UCD police Chief Annette Spicuzza was told not to use force during Nov. 17 conference calls between her and a group of 13 top administrators, attorneys and staff on Nov. 17 about removing the Occupy encampment.

Katehi also has said she had no one-on-one discussions with the chief about the encampment and that it was not a chancellor’s place to make tactical decisions.

Spicuzza, Lt. John Pike and one other officer have been placed on leave pending the outcome of inquiries into what took place on the Quad. They include a criminal investigation, as well as a Faculty Senate special committee that is scheduled to complete its work by March 19.

A task force of faculty, students and staff plans to release its recommendations to Katehi and Yudof in early March. No date has been set yet.

Those recommendations are to be released in tandem with a fact-finding report by Kroll Security, a firm headed by former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.

One of the chancellor’s most vocal critics, English professor Joshua Clover, said that having three resolutions — a fourth, this one a vote of confidence, is still being voted on — muddied the waters and that the “clanky operations of parliamentary censure” don’t always jibe with the “pace of political possibility.”

“The window in which people have the will and passion to make substantive changes stays open only very briefly,” Clover said in an email message. “Then the immobilizing machinery does what it is intended to do, which is to mumble a psuedo-collective ‘steady as she goes’ and proceed as before.

“We probably had a week in which there was real and honest openness to rethinking the university. People were serious and level-headed and ready, and I found that impressive and moving. They were ready to change things at the root. It needs it; that much is obvious.”

Clover found some consolation from the voters’ clear concern about policing on campus, a subject Katehi has agreed should be addressed after the task force makes it recommendations.

Katehi isn’t the only UC leader who has taken fire for the handling of Occupy protests. The UC Berkeley Academic Senate voted to condemn Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s administration after police there used batons while removing an encampment Nov. 9, but stopped short of a no-confidence vote.

The UC Board of Regents appointed Katehi, now 58, as UCD’s sixth chancellor in May 2009.

Her predecessor, Larry Vanderhoef, also received overwhelming support in a 2006 no-confidence vote.

Vanderhoef was criticized for a settlement given to Celeste Rose, former vice chancellor of university relations, after she threatened a discrimination lawsuit when pressured to resign in 2005. It was one of several “golden parachutes” and bonuses given to UC administrators that were criticized following a San Francisco Chronicle series exposing the practice.

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net. Follow him at http://twitter.com/cory_golden

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=138806

Posted by Cory Golden on Feb 17 2012.
Last Login: Mon 21 May 2012 03:57:15 PM PDT
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