On the 15th of November, undergraduate students that were organizing for the N-20 UC Solidarity Strike participated in an action to raise awareness of the school’s mis-management during Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla’s Founder’s Day speech. In celebration of the school’s founding in November of 1960, the students revived a radical tradition of direct action. Late educators of UCSD, such as Herbert Marcuse and Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, would have surely been proud of such a demonstration. The action lasted between five and ten minutes. What followed was a frightening show of force by the administration – an attempt to punish and intimidate students into submission who are rightfully organizing in the precise place where politics belong, in the public.

The students involved formed part of the UCSD Strike Committee, an undergraduate organization that aimed to promote and organize undergrad participation in the historic November 20th Solidarity Strike by AFSCME and UAW. The students presented themselves at the Founder’s Day event held at the school’s Town Square. As Pradeep Khosla stepped up to the podium, the students began their action. They began with a cacerolazo, a popular form of protest throughout Latin America that has spread to Europe and the United States, in which protestors bang pots and pans. What followed was a statement addressed to those that had gathered for the Founder’s Day event, that is, alumni and funders who finance the school out of their own personal wallets. The list of demands was a summary accusation against the administration of the University of California. It was a list of demands based on the solidarity between the student body and the workers. It was an attack against the ongoing privatization of the university that has entrenched the school in social and economic inequality. Resulting in the death of the university as public. And so, accordingly, the students conducted a die-in, in which the students acted out their own death, symbolizing the death of the University of California as a school for all and in the interest of all. The Chancellor was interrupted for two minutes, before the Chancellor continued to speak, raised the volume of his microphone, unwilling to give the very students he is supposed to represent, anymore audience. After this, the student’s left the event.

The response by the administration is unprecedented. On the 21st of November the students were informed via email that the school was seeking to pursue an action against the students. The violations they currently face are as follows: Disruption of University Supported Activities, Disturbance of the Peace, and Failure to Comply. The students were told that they “have the opportunity to meet with the Director of Student Conduct, Ben White, to discuss an administrative resolution for alleged violations” by December 2nd. If not, the students would not have “the benefit” of their “input” and the administration would seek out its course of action without them.

The students felt alarmed as they wondered how the school knew it was them. Fortunately for them (and quite unfortunately for the administration), with the emails they sent to one of the students an extra document was enclosed. The document revealed a play straight out of the NSA playbook. The administration had gone to the Facebook accounts of the students and copied photos of them. The photos, stark in the black and white format in which they were sent out, reveal the extent to which Gary Ratcliff had gone to find our fellow students. The photos selected by Ratcliff are eerie and appear out of a case file from an orwellian surveillance apparatus. In some photos, the students gather together, one of which is holding a microphone. As one of the student’s rightfully says, “It is apparent to me that these specific photos, chosen out of hundreds of tagged photos, were chosen to criminalize me in the eyes of the Office of Student Conduct.” In others, Ratcliff hand-picked close-ups of the student’s faces, photos of the students in the comfort of their own homes, their own friends, of their own families. As one of the student’s says, “the measures taken by Gary Ratcliff to identify us through facebook photos are disturbing”

Most frightening of all is how Gary Ratcliff acquired the photo of one of the students, Emily. The photo that he retrieved was set to private and in order to see it one has to be friends with Emily. The photo was not intended for anyone other than their friends. What is more, the photo was of Emily’s transition. They said, “It was set to only friends. I am gender queer and I’ve made a transition toward a more masculine presentation, so I’ve been documenting it. But I keep it for friends only so I didn’t get random rumors and things from people I know but aren’t friends with”. The retrieval of this photo in particular highlights the extent of Ratcliff’s invasion of privacy, his disregard of students as human beings with private lives. Through this invasion the administration made it’s case against our fellow students. Furthermore, the administrative snooping serves as intimidation. It is meant to inform the student’s of the extent of the administration’s powers.

What’s more, Ratcliff demands that the students write an essay on the meaning of freedom of speech. According to the “laws” of the administration, freedom of speech has a time, a place, and a manner, as evidenced by the school law known as TPM (Time, Place, and Manner). This law was put into place two years ago (that is, after years of student protests regarding the privatization of the school), and ultimately regulates the “Time, Place, and Manner” of free speech. And who defines the right “time, place, and manner”? The administration, of course. This is meant for nothing more but to humiliate and insult our fellow students. Who is Gary Ratcliff, a white male who makes $133,527.40 a year, to define what freedom of speech is?

As a student rightfully points out it seems Ratcliff “targeted students” in a manner that is “a gross violation of privacy and a clear display of harassment”. More frightening yet, is that the administration approved Ratcliff’s conduct. An entire bureaucratic apparatus had no problem with the way the case was made and continues to support Ratcliff’s actions and continues to pursue charges against the students.

The administration’s attempt to submit our fellow students is a direct attack against that which they fear most: an organized and conscious student body that is willing to fight against the direction of the university. It becomes more obvious that the administration wishes to attack the UCSD Strike Committee for their militancy when one also looks at how they are trying to intimidate another member of the Strike Committee, who wasn’t even part of the N-15 action. The reason for her persecution: using the wrong kind of tape when putting up strike-related information around campus. Now the administration is taking action against this student as well. The administration does not care that this student is also a senator for the Associated Students. The administration does not care that she is an elected representative who has hung banners beofre, but now that she is involved in a strike, she gets reprimanded. The administration simply does not care that it looks absolutely absurd in the face of its student body.

Regarding the administration’s attack, Nick states:

“I feel like the UC administration’s actions are targeting us for our involvement in the student worker solidarity strike. This was one of the first UC wide strikes in which graduate students, service workers, patient care workers, and undergraduate students showed a concerted mobilization. This was the first year students faced conduct code violation for Founders Day, and one of the few times in which organizers on campus have faced sanctions by the UC.”

When asked of the request by Ratcliff to write of free speech, Emily said:

“I think it’s ridiculous and disgusting. I did nothing wrong. I was exercising my right to free speech. And if any student conduct code says that my rights under federal or California law doesn’t apply on a public campus then I say fuck the conduct code! I wont write that essay. No way in hell am I going to grovel at Gary Ratcliff’s feet so he can use that to keep me from protesting further and create an environment of fear for future student activism.”

And this is precisely what is at stake. The university aims to quell any sort of dissent and defiance towards a university that is in decline. The university aims to quash the very public it is intended to serve. The university aims to silence the students and the workers who are fighting for dignity and a better tomorrow, a better university, that serves all people, not the administration and their wallets. The university is a space where free speech must be of utmost importance. The university is a space where critical thought must be fostered. The university is a space that must be taken back for the public good.

Petition to support students, click here

SOLIDARIDAD POR SIEMPRE,

Your Fellow Worker

“The young militants know or sense that what is at stake is simply their life, the life of human beings which has become a plaything in the hands of politicians and management and generals. The rebels want to take it out of these hands and make it worth living; they realize that this is still possible today, and that the attainment of this goal necessitates a struggle which can no longer be contained by the rules and regulations of a pseudo-democracy in a Free Orwellian World.” — Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation