The beleaguered chancellor of University of California, Davis, is preparing to explain her position to students after campus police deployed pepper-spray at close range on protesting students who apparently posed little threat.

Linda Katehi has agreed to speak to the protesters' General Assembly on Monday. It was announced on Sunday that two campus police officers have been placed on administrative leave while an investigation is carried out.

The university did not name the officers officially, but at least one of the officers has been identified as Lieutenant John Pike.

A police officer at the University of California, Davis, deploys pepper spray on students taking part in an Occupy protest. Photograph: The Aggie /Brian Nguyen

UC Davis's faculty association called on Katehi to resign, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership."

Given the recent use of excessive force by police against "occupy" protestors at UC Berkeley and elsewhere, the Chancellor must have anticipated that, by authorizing police action, she was effectively authorizing their use of excessive force against peaceful UCD student protestors. The Chancellor's role is to enable open and free inquiry, not to suppress it.

Her position has been under threat after a series of mis-steps following the incident on Friday. In her first statement, while expressing concern at the use of pepper spray, Katehi said her responsibility had been to protect the "safety and health" of protesting students.

She initially said an inquiry would report in 90 days – on Sunday, she brought the deadline forward to 30 days.

After a news conference on Saturday, Katehi remained inside a building at UC Davis for three hours, as hundreds of students surrounded it. A university official accompanying Ketehi told the Davis Enterprise that he believed the crowd was hostile and that she would not be able to leave safely.

But when she left, she walked to her car through a seated, silent phalanx of students.



The protests, which had been endorsed by a faculty association, were called to oppose tuition fee increases and the force used by police on other University of California campuses in response to recent protests.

The students had set up about 25 tents in a quad area, but they had been asked not to stay overnight and were told they would not be able to stay during the weekend due to a lack of university resources.

Some protesters took their tents down voluntarily while others stayed. Footage uploaded to YouTube shows an officer wearing riot gear blasting pepper spray into the faces of students sitting on the ground, their arms linked.

In a statement on Sunday, Katehi indicated she would not resign:

I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident. However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again. I feel very sorry for the harm our students were subjected to and I vow to work tirelessly to make the campus a more welcoming and safe place.

'I'm going to spray these kids down'

BoingBoing interviewed one of the students who was pepper-sprayed on Sunday.

We were never warned that we were going to be pepper-sprayed. Lt Pike walked up to my friend, and I am told that he said, "Move or we're going to shoot you." Then he went back and talked to a few of his police officer friends. A couple of other officers started to remove people who were sitting there, blocking exit. Pike could have easily removed us, just picked us up and removed us. We were just sitting there, nonviolent civil disobedience. But Pike turned around and I am told that he said to the other officers, "Don't worry about it, I'm going to spray these kids down." He lifts the can, spins it around in a circle to show it off to everybody. Then he sprays us three times. As if one time of being sprayed at point blank wasn't enough. I was on the end of the line getting direct spray. When the second pass came, I got up crawling. I crawled away and vomited on a tree. I was yelling. It burned. Within a few minutes I was dry heaving, I couldn't breathe. Then, over the course of the next hour, I was dry heaving and vomiting.

The Second Alarm blog posted an interview with a student who identifies herself as Shannon, who was also sprayed at the protest. She says no-one from the university authorities has contacted her to discuss her welfare following the incident.