Πηγή:
sacbee.com
UC Davis students angry about rising tuition have staged many protests in the last year and a half – including sit-ins at campus buildings, a naked rally on the quad and a march that almost walked onto
Interstate 80.
Now students are staging a new confrontation against campus management, accusing administrators of spying on their activist movement. Student activists and the
American Civil Liberties Union will hold a press conference at UC Davis today to call attention to their allegation that university officials have violated students' rights to free speech by monitoring their demonstrations.
"When the administration tells us over and over that they are in support of us … and then they turn around and show us this mistrust by infiltrating our peaceful
student organizations, it sends a very contradictory message to us," said student Eric Lee, 20.
UC Davis officials say there is no contradiction in their approach. They have formed a more organized response to campus activism as it has heated up, said Assistant Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro. But the goal is to make it safer – not harder – for students to exercise their
First Amendment rights.
"Our premise is that if we have a presence, there is less cause for
police action. That is primarily our goal," Castro said.
Demonstrations swept across
University of California campuses statewide during the fall of 2009, when the governing Board of Regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent in response to budget cuts from the state. In November of that year, 53 UC Davis students were arrested after they refused to leave the administration building known as Mrak Hall.
Chancellor Linda Katehi later said she didn't want any more students arrested because it brings excessive attention to their protests.(
sic) Demonstrations continued throughout the year but with a milder police response.
Meanwhile, university officials were planning a new way to monitor and respond to demonstrations. Previously, keeping tabs on campus protests had been the job of a handful of employees from the student affairs division, Castro said. The new approach involved asking for volunteers from several UC Davis departments, and training dozens of people in how to staff a protest while respecting student rights to free expression.
