Week 4: Raylph Evangelista - A01

Raylph Evangelista

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After going over the given readings, it seems as though this week we are going to delve into a topic that I seriously didn't even bother looking into until I started taking this class. When I read A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis Respond to Occupy movements, it really boggled my mind when I found out how Berkeley responded to the Occupy movement. The students who protested were able to do so peacefully and even got what they wanted without having to get pepper sprayed. Why UC Davis responded the way they did will always be a big question for me. I can't believe that a school that is part of the same string of universities in California would resort to the creation of danger for their students, while a fellow university does the complete opposite. What makes this all the more worse, is that UCD actually tried to cover everything up and act like it didn't happen. I can't help but wonder whether the damages that happened at Davis were due to the school itself, or if they are fully attributed to the chancellor at that time. Another one of the readings which stood out to me was the first chapter of the book Whistleblower. I could actually feel the fear that Amy Block Joy was trying to convey in her writing. The fact that she had to be questioned by the police because she wanted to stand by her beliefs and tell the truth astonishes me. It is quite admirable however that she wanted to speak out against the criminal activity going on at the University of California, Davis. To be completely honest I feel like I would have given up if I was her. The fact that people kept trying to silence her is terrifying because she didn't know who she could rely on and who was part of the "embezzling" in which she found out about. In all, I think that there are some fishy things that happen at the University of California, Davis. I think that it is important that we the students are aware of them, even though there may not be anything going on right at this moment.

Why couldn't Davis handle the Occupy movement the same way Berkeley did?

References

Markow, Alan. A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis Respond to Occupy movement, IVN, 2011.

Joy, Amy Block. "Chapter 1." Whistleblower, Bay Tree Publishing, 2010, pp. 1-9.

Feldman, Brian. UC Davis Tries to Scrub Pepper-Spray Incident From Web, Which Means It’s Now the First Result on Google, New York Magazine, 2016.