Pepper Spray: Regent Chair Reacts

Regent chair Lansing with a message to UC community

2011-11-21

UC Board of Regents chair Sherry Lansing says in a video statement that she is "shocked and appalled" by the images of police actions during recent student protests at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Lansing supports UC President Mark Yudof's effort to review systemwide procedures so that students can engage in peaceful protests.

"We regents share your passion and your conviction for the University of California," Lansing says. "We want all of you to know that we fully and unequivocally support your right to protest peacefully."

Lansing also invites the people to express their views at the Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 28. The rescheduled meeting will be open to the public and connected by a teleconference with regents participating from UC San Francisco-Mission Bay, UCLA, UC Davis and UC Merced. As usual, the meeting will also be streamed online. The public comment period has been expanded from 20 minutes to at least one hour.

Source with video: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26709

Appreciate the sentiment but maybe a bit more creative choice of words would have helped:

More seriously, one has the sense that the usual crisis management advice - get out ahead of the story - is being followed here, perhaps with overkill, to get "control" of the situation. There are national issues that are the subject of the Occupy demonstrations over which the Regents have no control. But they do control UC. The UCLA Faculty Association noted some time back in a 2009 open letter to the Regents that there is a budget emergency facing UC and that the business-as-usual regental meetings every two months don't appear to be an emergency response. See http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/07/after-faculty-assn-letter-to-regents-of.html

For earlier blog posts on these continuing developments, go to:

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/yudof-on-berkeley-and-san-diego.html

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/uc-davis-pepper-spray-controversy.html

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/yudof-issues-statement-on-events-at-uc.html

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/campus-demonstrations-recent-back-in.html

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/ucla-recent-history-nov-9-demonstration.html