Reactions to Activism

After reading "Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism", I better understand the reactions many people had to the pepper spraying incident at UC Davis.

Though my dad wasn't in Berkeley during the birth of the FSM, he was shaped by his later time at Cal. When he heard about the pepper spraying incident in Davis, he immediately wrote a letter which was published in the Davis Enterprise (http://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/letters/shameful-police-treatment-of-ucd-protestors/).Though I still believe it was a bit premature (the Reynoso Task Force found that Katehi did intend a peaceful ending and made instructions to that effect), given the history of campus police brutality (including the then quite recent beatings by UC Berkeley police) such reactions are called for. At the time, I just thought it was strange that the occupiers were allowed to stay overnight when I was harassed just weeks before for playing disc golf on campus at night (they asked what we were doing and had all of our ID cards checked, and we were told about the limits of night activity).

In contrast, my department's (Computer Science) reaction was incredibly weak. It lacked any context and could only express "regret". As given in the article, support of the faculty greatly eases the movement from protest to policy changes. When faculty can't present a united front, it's much more difficult to get things done.

 

-Jackson Williamson