Alina Alam
Columnist
Is $30,000 enough to right a wrong?
On Nov. 19, 2011, University of California-Davis campus police officers pepper sprayed 21 student demonstrators as they sat on the ground, silently and non-violently participating in the Occupy UC Davis movement.
The event made international headlines and was met with responses of outrage, with many viewing the actions of the police officers as unprovoked and unjustified.
Last week, the university reached a legal settlement of $1 million; each of the 21 victims will obtain about $30,000, along with a written apology from the university chancellor Linda Katehi, who received criticism from many for her lack of efficiency in responding to the actions of the campus police.
Although the motivations and intents were entirely different, any VCU student that participated in the Final Four riots can feel some kinship to the 21 UC Davis students. Police forces, especially when clad in riot gear, are intimidating. Excessive force meets excessive fear. Tensions, (however vapid their origins), flare as individuals are physically and mentally pushed and trapped. As with any sort of movement or protest, motivation comes from someone feeling that they’ve been wronged in some way.
Intrusions on a protest are inevitably hostile coming from those that represent and maybe disagree with the protester’s ideology, like the officers at UC-Davis.
If the officers were not aware that they would be met with opposition when they were given the assignment, then they were being incredibly naïve. To attack the students because of a feeling of agression is wrong, especially considering that Linda Katehi later stated, “Free speech and nonviolent protests are core values at UC Davis.” That genuinely expressed sentiment was not displayed that day. Blunt, cold authority, armed with pepper-spray, was.
While paying the students $30,000 is fine, it is not the most important part of the settlement. The real significance here is whether the settlement following the incident had a meaningful outcome and whether it changes how the university responds to similar situations in the future.
It’s not simply about the act itself, which is shocking, but the brutality with which it occurred. Students who tried to cover their faces to protect themselves from the spray had their mouths forced open and were sprayed directly down their throats, as reported by UC-Davis Professor Nathan Brown in an open letter to the Chancellor.
In this light, we have to see the officers as more than their job titles, but as humans committing a violent act against other humans.
Individuals have a right to a peaceful protest, and despite the university’s claim in valuing this right, they did not demonstrate it at a time when the campus and the viewing nation needed to see it the most. We can only hope that some serious changes will be made in the way that campus police forces will operate in the future, especially in response to heated, but non-violent, protest.
That hope extends from UC-Davis to right here at VCU, as no campus is immune to what we perceive to be police brutality.