Replacing the UCDPD
I was interested to read in Friday’s paper that Chancellor Linda Katehi’s recommendation to end the campus asylum law in Greece was not intended as support for the permanent presence of heavily armed campus police force, but to “give campuses options for security, including hiring police or having student security guards.”
This gives me some hope that she will embrace student proposals to dissolve the UC Davis Police Department and provide the needed security services through students or unarmed intervention specialists, with the city of Davis PD always available as a backstop.
If she would put the weight of her office behind such genuine, student-originated proposals, many who have been dissatisfied with her handling of matters since Nov. 18 may begin to view her as an ally rather than an obstacle to reform.
Michael Ziser
Davis
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=109791
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Posted by Letters to the Editor
on Nov 28 2011.
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Please go look up the Virginia tech shooting and telling me ” security services through students or unarmed intervention specialists” are a good idea. You should feel lucky to have a police force close at hand to protect the students.
Totally agree with Ryan. This is a stupid idea. If the get rid of the UCPD and something happens everyone is going to switch there opinions and blame someone else. There is no possible way for students to provide security.
University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau hijack’s all our kids’ futures.
I love University of California (UC) having been a student & lecturer. Like so many I am deeply disappointed by the pervasive failures of Birgeneau from holding the line on rising costs & tuition increases. On an all in cost, Birgeneau has molded Cal. into the most expensive public university.
Paying more is not a better education. Instate tuition consumes 14% of Calif. median family income! Faculty wages must reflect California’s ability to pay, not what others are paid.
Chancellor Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) dismissed many much needed cost-cutting options. He did not consider freezing vacant faculty positions, increasing class size, requiring faculty to teach more classes, doubling the time between sabbaticals, freezing pay & benefits, reforming pensions & health benefits.
Birgeneau said such faculty reforms “would not be healthy for Cal”. Exodus of faculty, administrators: who can afford them?
We agree it is far from the ideal situation. UC Berkeley cannot expect to do business as usual: raising tuition; granting pay raises & huge bonuses during a weak economy that has sapped state revenues & individual Californians’ income.
Birgeneau can bridge the trust gap with alumni, donors, politicians, and the public with reassurances that salaries & costs reflect California’s ability to pay.
Chancellor Birgeneau’s campus police deployed violent baton jabs on students protesting increases in tuition. The sky above UC will not fall when Chancellor Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) is ousted.
Opinions? Email the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu