Love and Life

It has been many moons since I have written anything for The 25 Year Plan. Too many. Since this blog has served primarily as an ongoing life journal for the past six-plus years, it makes sense that certain major life events would be documented here. Things like the completion of my master's degree earlier this year; things like the successful completion of the first year of my doctoral program at LSU; and it might be important to mention that I am getting married just a few hours from now. These are not everyday things that just come and go in one’s life – they are in a very real sense what life is all about. These are the things that are remembered not only by my soon-to-be wife, my immediate family, my close friends, and me, but for some these are the things that will be remembered long after we are gone. These are the things that constitute our legacy and they should be documented here.

My bride and I have not lived what most would describe a “normal” life. While it is true that virtually no one can claim adherence to any standard of “normal,” it is also true that we have deviated enough from that idealistic path that no one would describe us as conformists. Not even remotely. It’s more than just the fact that we are getting married later in life and more than the family we are blending – the mixing and matching of families is an all too common reality of modern life. It’s more than the quasi-tradition marriage (that is, it is traditional where convenient or affordable, quasi when it’s not) we have cobbled together. It is much more than any of that because where we are today – in love, getting married and living a life that has a future beyond the next hour – is not anything either of us thought could ever be attained. We each have years of experience that tells us so, yet here we are, living the dream.

That is not to say that we have somehow stumbled into a life of luxury. Spiritually, yes, we are overpaid, but the struggles of life on a daily basis are still with us. Our relationship will still be part-time long distance, albeit now as husband and wife. The bills still have to be paid and although I have completed both a BA and an MA recently, the real hurdle is the Ph.D. that I am still in the process of working on. My wife will have her own day-to-day details to attend to, not the least of which is raising two sons who will hopefully follow a path that is perhaps not well-trodden, but one that does not lead into a brick wall – or off a cliff. One can be a nonconformist without being dangerous, stupid or making life unnecessarily hard. Indeed, Jenny and I are living proof that following the path less traveled can be fulfilling and rewarding… or dangerous and hard. We have been there, we have done that.

It has become abundantly clear that life is a team sport. I became resistant to being committed, dependent, reliant, beholden - pick your adjective – on or to anyone for anything. I believed myself to be independent and lived that way, yet the truth is that I was never independent. Jenny has never been married, but I was and it ended very badly more than 20 yeas ago. It colored my world black for a very long time and it is safe to say that, while she was never married, Jenny built a wall that was equally robust. Don’t let anyone in and no one can hurt you. But that past several years have been witness to a transformation - an attitudinal change, a new perspective - that occurred independently until we met in late 2010. Since then a synergy that I can only describe a true love has propelled us back into the thick of life.

Our marriage is perhaps the most profound example of the changes in our lives, but also noteworthy are the many, many other relationships we have developed or repaired. There will be between 150 and 200 guests at our wedding and everyone of them represents a relationship with one or both of us that goes significantly beyond just a mere “acquaintance.” In fact, the vast majority are friends in the truest sense of the word. And, of course, there are many more that cannot attend. These are all things that make life worth living. These are the things that money cannot buy. This is what life is all about. Our wedding is, first and foremost, a celebration of our love for and commitment to each other, but it is also a celebration of love and life in general. It is what life is all about.

So, This is Old...

This blog has served many, many purposes; it has been kind of a catchall for what ever passed through my mind and out of my fingers. I used to post many times every month and while the postings here have diminished to less than once a month, the writing has never stopped. Today I am starting three stories for a local newspaper that I used to work for. Freelance news writing does not pay much, but writing for the newspaper has reawakened my love of local news reporting. No, I do not wish to re-enter the field on a full-time basis, but keeping my hand in it from time to time reconnects me to my youth – not as a news writer, but as a newspaper delivery boy. While I was probably too young to understand the vital public interest I was serving, the ancillary benefit of reading my newspapers as I was carefully folding them, preparing to fling them at my customers’ doorsteps, has lived with in my soul to this day. There was no Internet, no cell phones, no personal computers at all – people relied on their daily newspapers to keep them informed.

Like so many others, I get most of my news today via the Internet. I prefer sitting down to read my local daily newspaper, but sadly the days of washing the newsprint off my hands are gone. My news now comes from my local newspaper’s website as well as many other sources and although I like the almost unlimited availability of news sources, I really miss holding the paper in my hands. Oddly enough, I used to write with a typewriter and I do not miss that at all. I was, in many respects, a “techie,” I was onboard with the Internet in its early stages and stayed current until the late 90s. Now, however, I am more accurately a nostalgic techie and an experienced end-user; the kinds of things I used to know have no current value, but I do know my way around a computer. Technology has, of course, changed things. This ongoing rambling of “perspectives, purpose and opinion” would not have happened had there been no technology to drive it.

I have been around for nearly half a century. The past 50 years have been witness to evolutions and revolutions at a pace perhaps unprecedented in human history. Yet much remains remarkably the same. Humanity, while it might appear less humane than ever, still rests on a foundation of intangibles. There are “things” that exists outside of matter and energy. Truth, beauty, goodness, justice, love and a host of other intangible things are real, yet they cannot be quantified. Now, there are some scientists that might tells us that those things are simply the electrochemical impulses of our nervous system, that they exist as love, justice or what have you are simply human creations; they are labels or symbols to describe a physical reality – a nervous system response to stimuli. Even less appealing – they are instinctive survival responses. But that explanation does little to explain why love occurs, why some things are universally beautiful or why injustice is recognized as such even by those who are the most frequent offenders.

Fifty years is a long time, and I used to look at 50 as “old.” Now a little more than six months short of that milestone, I do not feel “old.” In fact, I am doing much of what a man half my age might be doing. I recently earned BA and MA degrees and I am one year into a PhD program that, if successful, will have me sporting the title of “Doctor” sometime in 2015. I am getting married in just six weeks and while I am not new to parenthood, new children are coming into my life. There is, of course, much more to this story than this rambling mind-through-fingers symbolic representation, but the very fact that these words will be read by someone else will help form what they mean. They are an addition to the wealth of human experience that has been recorded over the past few thousand years and the more I read of those who have gone before me, the more I realize how little we have changed. We have adapted the environment to meet our needs, but we have not conquered the world. We have technologized much, but that essence that makes us human has not changed one iota. Paraphrasing Kenneth Burke, we are animals that communicate and miscommunicate and it is perhaps the latter more than the former that truly makes us human.

Expectations and Respect

This past semester of college was the most difficult and disappointing yet. While my grades are not yet in, I do not believe I am in any danger of not passing my courses, but that does not lessen the my regret that I did not perform better. I could make a million excuses, but they all amount to an attempt to justify what I do not believe is justifiable. This is not the first time I have given a sub-par performance; my college career is lengthy and my earliest years were laced with an abundance of indifference, but that has not been the case since returning in earnest in the fall of 2004. It could also easily be argued that no matter how well I have done, I could have done better. But this time there is more to it than that…

Procrastination has been my nemesis since my earliest memories. I have fought against it with varying degrees of success throughout my life. I am easily distracted and I am fairly sure that if I would submit myself to some sort of psychological evaluation I would be diagnosed with the current ailment du jour, one that I am sure there is a miracle drug that would “cure” it. But my success thus far has proven that with sufficient fortitude, I can perform up to the standards that are expected of me. While those standards are exceeding high as a PhD student at Louisiana State University, they were equally high as an MA student at California State University, Sacramento. That MA, however, is still lacking the final component that will award me my degree and allow me to continue at LSU, and that is, in large part, responsible for my disappointment.

Procrastination. It drove me to put off what should have been completed a year ago. It greatly increased my workload when my workload was already significant. And I have no one to blame but myself. But, and this is a big “but,” I can handle letting myself down. I have even, to some degree, grown accustomed to it. What I cannot get used to is the ramifications it has for others when I fall short. In the past those others have mostly consisted of my family, but with my graduate experience I am now in a position that my meager performance sends a statement to those who have been instrumental in seeing me through thus far. I am speaking specifically of the graduate professors who have taken the time and interest in my education (time that is largely monetarily unrewarded) and the institutions that have granted me access to the highest levels of education.

Doing my utmost to meet these lofty expectations is more than just doing my part – it is a sign of respect. By not delivering my best and by allowing myself to drag my feet until the flames are lapping at my ass hurts not only my education, it wastes the time of those who have given so much of theirs to me. It is a sign of disrespect. And that I have done so causes me more regret than any personal ramifications to my own interests. In my culminating exams at CSUS, I was woefully unprepared. While it is likely that certain inherent defects in my ability to recall specific names and dates from memory would not have made a great deal of difference when it came to the written portion of those exams, in the oral defense there can be no such excuse – I should have been better prepared. As a result, I fell short of what was expected of me. Thankfully, I have been granted the opportunity to retake two of the six portions of my oral exams. I have been given another opportunity to show my appreciation and respect by performing not only up to expectations, but by exceeding them.

At the end of the day, that is far more important to me than the very real and dire consequences of not passing. Showing those who have gone out of their way to guide me along this path the respect they deserve is not why I do what I do, but it helps in doing it sooner and better. This school year is almost over – next year the expectations go up. The best way to respect those who are helping and have helped me meet those expectations is simple enough – meet them.

What We Do

Author's Note: This was written for a graduate seminar at LSU - posting it here is a cheap way of keeping this blog alive, but the questions posed are, nonetheless, relevant. For those with a scholarly disposition, the in-text citations have been left in place.

In reading the varying conceptualizations of what communication is, what it isn’t, whether it is representational or presentational, whether it is interactional or transactional and whether is should be firmly rooted in postmodernism or its evolutionary heir, the thread that appears to run through these works is Watzlawick et al.’s axiom “One cannot not communicate” (1967, p. 49). At the root of the axiomatic debate is the definition of communication itself. Upon hearing this axiom for the first time in an undergraduate business communication class, the explanation used to support it seemed to make sense. In an office setting, layer after layer of communication as we traditionally think of it was removed until simply the act of not showing up to work became a communicative act that said any number of things from “I’m sick,” to “I’m sick of working here.” Viewed now in retrospect, every layer of communication deprivation represented an intentional act, however, it is also clear that the intention might not have necessarily been to send a “message.”

Located on another place in the “What constitutes communication?” spectrum, we have the notion that communication must necessarily occur whenever there are two or more people present (Motley, 1991). That is, even if one is not communicating, the act of not communicating is communication. Complicating the definition even further, the idea that some form of intention (conscious or unconscious) is a sender-based view of communication whereas calling all behaviors communication imposes a “receiver bias” (Bavelas, 1990, p. 595). That is, one the one hand, if a behavior, verbal or otherwise, is intended to transmit a message, for some that constitutes communication regardless of how or if it is received while others claim that any behavior that transmits information, regardless of intent, is communication. Finally, postmodern thinkers have attempted to bridge the gap positing that communication is not a discrete “thing” that can be extracted and studied in isolation, but rather an event that consists of myriad and intrinsically elusive variables such that absolute certainty can never be achieved (Cronen, 1998).

All of the above academic epiphamizing still leaves us with the question, what is communication? While adopting a stance like the infamous US Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, “I know it when I see it,” is equally ambiguous when applied to communication, does any of the prior (and certainly future) debate help communication scholars? Communication Theories has a laundry list of 18 different academic definitions of “communication” (Miller, 2005), never mind the ancillary and necessary definitions of the terms that spring from those definitions. Some might argue that for disciplinary status and theory development, we, as communication scholars, need to define in no uncertain terms what it is that we study. But consider this: Can communication be as simple as the sharing of information? What constitutes “sharing” and what is meant by “information,” of course, is open to further debate, but as Deetz has pointed out, we do not study the substance of, say, psychology, or sociology (also ambiguously defined disciplines), or even hard sciences such as physics or chemistry, but we do study how the information produced by these diciplines is shared, used and even, to a certain extent, created – “We have to…produce studies that study psychological, sociological, and economic phenomena as formed and explained communicationally” (1994, p. 568).

Therefore, the definitional constraints on what, exactly, constitutes the communicative element is highly fluid and largely context dependent. Indeed, approaching the same question from two or more communicational perspectives, whether is be a linear model, a postmodern angle or a rhetorical view within the communication studies discipline can each reveal different but still valuable insights. Cronen is correct that certainty is an impossibility, however, this is nothing new – Aristotle’s Rhetoric is founded on the very idea of the contingent. If methodologies and theories – indeed, if disciplinary status - are dependent on a narrowly focused definition of communication, then we are forever destined to be nothing more than a field. But notice the debate regarding the definitions of terms such as “discipline,” “field,” “areas of study” and the like (Deetz, 1994). Similarly, many if not all other so-called disciplines can be subjected to the same definitional scrutiny. But we as communication scholars, not surprisingly, seem to dwell on this, perhaps due in part to our tenuous foothold in the academy, but also due to the fact that this is part and parcel of what we do.

The ongoing debate is a two-edged sword. It is exceedingly beneficial to examine and re-examine what communication is and toward that end, develop new theories and methodologies that propel our understanding of a phenomenon that can never be fully understood. Our discipline’s propensity to communicate about communication is a practical application of the art we study. However, when it comes to entrenched beliefs and interdepartmental divisions, it weakens our standing in the academy. In justifying one area of study to the exclusion of another, we fuel those who see us as a field without substance, a community of scholars with no community. The simple fact is that no area of study, indeed, not even the human race as we know it, exists outside of or without communication. We don’t study chemistry or psychology or economics or basket weaving, we study how people in those “areas of study” or “fields” or “disciplines” communicate. We study the sharing of information, regardless of how one defines it.

The University in Crisis

An email alert graced my inbox not five minutes ago. A police officer at Virginia Tech was shot today. The details are still sketchy, but it appears as though the shooting took place during a traffic stop on campus. While the severity of the shooting is still unknown and the possibility of a second victim was reported, the report indicates no suspect has yet been apprehended. A campus-wide alert is in effect telling students and faculty to stay inside. It is at least tacitly ironic that today is the day that Virginia Tech is defending itself for a fine imposed due to its response (or lack thereof) in 2007, an event that still reverberates today. For those who recall the murderous rampage at Virginia Tech, this report is chilling and telling; our children live in a much different world today. Many claim that the murders of the “student gunman” who killed 32 students and faculty before killing himself at Virginia Tech represent a turning point in how campus police operate, but I contend that the relational alignment between campus police and the communities they serve did not change overnight. Virginia Tech provided a convenient justification for campus police, but in reality the relationship between campus cops and students has not been cordial for some time now.

Look at any local law enforcement agency’s regalia and you will find somewhere the words, “To protect and to serve.” Ostensibly the protection and service is provided to the community, the law-abiding citizens who, through their tax dollars, employ the force that is serving them. While never asked out loud, the implicit, perhaps rhetorical, question arises, “Protection from whom… or what?” Of course this is rhetorical because the answer is obvious, but it is decidedly not rhetorical when one digs through many of the police endeavors to “protect” us. While overzealous police activity is nothing new – indeed, it appears that a peculiar attraction of the job appeals to at least a few who are prone to egotistic exertions of power – there is something darker than just a few cops using too much force to counter criminal activity. Whereas the Rodney King beating was clear example of excess of power institutionalized within the Los Angeles Police Department, Rodney King was a criminal in the purest sense of the word. This does not excuse the excessive use of force by the LAPD, but it does highlight a troubling paradigm shift that something darker is going on here. Who are the criminals today, particularly in the institutional mind of campus police?

If the events last month at the Davis and Berkeley campuses of the University of California are any indication, the relationship is adversarial at best. Now it could be argued that those were isolated incidents and that the police were simply following orders, but it makes little difference whether either or both of those contentions are true. What could not be established in both cases is the presence of criminals or criminal intent. As the viral YouTube videos of the incidents show, the campus police were squared off against students and faculty who were peaceably protesting. Although it is true that they may have been violating some local rules, ordinances or – how dare they – decorum, they were not criminals any more than my receiving a speeding ticket makes me one. The battle cry from the defenders of force, “they were breaking the law, they deserve what they got” can be carried to logical absurdity by calling for the death penalty for parking violations. Using OC spray (euphemistically referred to as “pepper-spray”) and batons on peaceful, non-violent protestors, whether or not they are “breaking the rules,” is an inappropriate use of force. Period.

But this relationship goes much deeper than a couple of publicly displayed instances of (extremely) poor judgment by campus police. And this overall attitude, while certainly apparent in those who find the power of law enforcement intoxicating, exists at the upper levels of campus police administration. Shortly after the YouTube video of the UC Davis police attempts to “enforce” the law against those they are charged with protecting and serving, UCDPD Chief Annette Spicuzza defended her officers stating that they were “surrounded” and just needed to exit. She continued to defend them until she was silenced by “paid administrative leave.” As mentioned earlier, the video tells us much, and part of that “much” is that Spicuzza’s justification is patently false. And until the outrage went global, the upper levels of administration at UC Davis, including Chancellor Linda Katehi, condoned the actions of its law enforcement agency. When adversarial attitude comes from the top, is it any wonder the rank and file view the students as the enemy?

As a point of reference, a recent event on the Louisiana State University campus indicates how campus police leadership can positively influence the actions of its officers. Last summer a communication studies graduate student attempted to make a political statement by burning a US flag on the parade grounds. While ill advised, the action is constitutionally protected. On that day, protection is exactly what the student needed. A predictably angry mob of (mostly) other students mounted a counter-protest and his safety was anything but guaranteed. According to the student, the LSU campus police, while sympathetic to the counter-protesters, still managed to usher him away to safety. However, those officers also felt that he might deserved to be charged with some violation – perhaps the ever-popular law against using poor judgment? Causing a scene? Or maybe even a real law such as unlawful assembly or inciting a riot… regardless, the upper levels of police administration never let that happen. One would expect rational judgment from police administrators and at LSU, apparently, that expectation is realized.

It is perhaps logical that in the wake of Virginia Tech, campus police would reassess their role in campus life. However, the murderous rampage there and other equally random acts are just that, random. There is little that could have been done at Virginia Tech short of a total police state, and even then a determined nut-case would be able to carry out a similar slaughter. There was, after the tumultuous 60s where campus police exhibited a similar adversarial relationship (climaxing with the Ohio National Guard shooting 13 students, killing four at Kent State in 1970), a détente in campus police/student relations. I experienced it as a student at San Diego State University from 1983 -1985. As a initiate and later a member of a large national fraternity, I was involved in my share of pranks – pranks that occasionally brought me into contact with campus police. While I was sternly admonished and even detained for short periods of time, the police at the time knew who they were dealing with – a young, immature and easily influenced college student. In my two years at SDSU, I cannot remember one student ever being arrested and never once did I see any indication of militancy even at very large student gatherings such as home football games.

When I returned to college in earnest, it was 2003. The school was American River College, a community college in Sacramento, California. At the time, the campus police did not carry guns, but they were lobbying for the right to do so, arguing that there was the possibility that they might face a situation for which they would be ill-prepared. The student apprehension was palatable; many asking what recent situation would lead the police to believe that such a scenario was forthcoming. Despite overwhelming student disapproval, the ARC campus police now carry guns and, not surprisingly, have had occasion to use them. While the presence of weapons and riot gear does not foretell an occasion to use them, being prepared for an all out assault does signify the anticipation that such an event could occur. But the question should be, from whom would the aggression originate? A campus police force rarely deals with non-students. Are they expecting the students to mount a counter-offensive?

After transferring to California State University, Sacramento in 2005, my major was journalism. Upon completing my internship, even before graduation, I was a professional journalist – I had a real job at a real newspaper writing real news about real people and got paid real money to do it. It was not a campus newspaper. In my capacity as a journalist I was in contact with city police, county sheriffs and state highway patrol on a regular basis. Our relationship was always cordial even when investigating occasional police transgressions. I also had occasion to write stories that required input from the California State University police. I presented myself, depending on the context of the story, sometimes as a student journalist and others as just a journalist, and found the level of cooperation only slightly better when not identifying as a student journalist. My interviews were always with police “spokespersons” or upper administration and in both my journalistic roles, when asking probing questions I was met with indifference, indignation and more than once, disrespect. I was even underhandedly threatened with arrest on one occasion – for simply asking questions. This was before Virginia Tech and on a relatively quiet campus. As a student journalist, I would expect that the campus police would have viewed our relationship as synergistic rather than adversarial. After all, are we not on the same team? Are we not both members of the same campus community? It is as though the campus police, and more importantly, their leadership, have set themselves apart from and outside the campus to which they serve.

It is difficult to say if the new militarism exhibited by many campus police forces is a reflection of the recent militarism seen throughout the nation in the various “Occupy” protests or not. An argument can be made that the 1999 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle was the turning point in the forced quelling of protest activity. The tolerance gained through the sacrifices in the 60s appears the have been forgotten. A college campus is no place to silence descent, as University of California President Mark Yudof said in the wake of the infamous “pepper-spray” incident at UC Davis,  “free speech is part of the DNA of this university.” If campus police use force to quiet civil disobedience the way civil rights protesters were dealt with in Montgomery, Alabama just a half-century ago, what is that telling our students? Although this is a dangerous trend, the public outrage in the aftermath of the twin uses of force in Berkeley and Davis is hopeful. Maybe we haven’t forgotten after all.

Seriously Questioning Authority

I have not had time to write in this space in quite a while. I do not have time now. But I am compelled by the recent police action on the campus of University of California, Davis. I, like a great many others, was appalled at the egregious violence perpetrated upon the peacefully protesting students last Friday afternoon. Many have come to the defense of the university police department saying that the students were breaking the law and failed to obey police orders. That is true, they knowingly did both. They likely expected to be arrested and might even have foreseen the use of OC spray (euphemistically referred to as “pepper-spray") against them. The numerous YouTube videos tell a very compelling story, but as many have pointed out, the videos do not tell the whole story. The question is, do they tell enough?

Without completely rehashing the institutional “he-said/she-said,” it is important to at least set the stage. Students at UCD were protesting – it doesn’t even matter what they were protesting. People protest about all sorts of things all the time, college students do it almost as a right of passage. Part of the protest was an “encampment,” a form of protest that seems to be all the rage these days. UCD policy prohibits “camping” on campus and in the interest of student safety and with a blind adherence to policy, Chancellor Linda Katehi ordered the tents, not the protestors, removed. According to her statements today, she was adamant that the police do nothing else, that a confrontation like the one that occurred at University of California, Berkeley days earlier was not to occur.

Apparently, the UCD Police Department (not to be confused with the City of Davis PD – an important distinction that will come up again shortly) did not understand this directive. Now, what we do not know is whether Katehi is telling the truth, - if that was indeed her directive. At the moment it looks as though she is sincere, but time will tell. Regardless, the video(s) show the UCDPD came to the scene in full riot gear, each carrying multiple “zip-tie” handcuffs and a full “non-lethal” arsenal including “pepper-spray” paint-ball guns, OC spray in fire extinguisher-size canisters and batons, at the ready. After dismantling the tents and arresting the protestors occupying them, supporters sat in a circle around the encampment, arms interlocked in absolutely non-confrontational, non-violent solidarity with the cuffed campers.

But they were blocking the pathway through the quad between the officers and their vehicles. There were numerous officers both inside and outside the circle. Nonchalantly, one officer, later identified as UCDPD Lt. John Pike, casually stepped over the seated protestors and proudly displayed a can of OC spray to the bystanders, the officers outside the ring and the protestors before spraying the seated, peaceful, non-violent protestors, emptying the can at point blank range in a sweeping motion like he was applying Miracle Grow to his garden. When he ran out, he motioned for another officer to bring his canister and continue the dousing. All actions are in apparent violation of the UC’s own policies. In the words of Katehi, it was “chilling” and the president of the entire University of California system called it “appalling.” It was all that and more.

Of course the story has garnered worldwide attention. Of course. How could it not? UCDPD Chief Annette Spicuzza defended her officers stating that they were “surrounded” and just needed to exit, insisting the officers were in danger. She continued to defend them until she was silenced by a “paid administrative leave” (joining Pike and the other officer). As mentioned earlier, the video tells us much, and part of that “much” is that Spicuzza’s justification is patently false. Remember that warning not to confuse the UCDPD with the city police? That’s because the city police were there due to a call for mutual aid. One DPD officer, later identified as Captain Darren Pytel, is easy to spot. He only appears for a few seconds, but he has no riot gear. His hands are empty, open and gesturing for calm. And he looks bewildered. It does not look as though he has the same “respect” for the “volatility” of the situation that the UCDPD expected.

It was a volatility that never manifested despite the UCDPD’s best efforts. Now I don’t know what their mindset was, but when the police go into a situation that heavily armed with riot gear and weaponry, they are expecting a confrontation. Perhaps they were disappointed that the students did not read the script. The students acted in a way far more mature than many give them credit for. The UCDPD underestimated their “adversary” and came completely ill prepared for passivity. They went in with an agenda that they would be facing students completely uncharacteristic of the students on a campus that they police all day every day. It is their only jurisdiction. They should have known better, even if no directive was ever sent down not to “create another Berkley.”

The question left is the time honored who-knew-what-when? Whose decision was this and whose head should roll? To her credit, Katehi is not sweeping this under the rug. She and UC President Mark Yudof are appropriately appalled and have publicly expressed as much, probably against the advice of their lawyers. If what Katehi said is true, Spicuzza is history and Pike should be, too. Even if Pike was “just following orders,” an officer of his rank and experience should have made a better assessment in the deployment of force. His salary is $110,000 (of your money) per year. For that much money he should be expected to think.

These are not “rank and file” officers. They are administrators, executives, they are paid to correctly asses situations, follow directives and ensure that those they are hired to protect are not harmed in the process of “protecting” them. On the quad of UC Davis, Friday afternoon, 18 November 2011, no one was served or protected and someone needs to answer for it. At last count, no less than four independent investigations are in process. What is on the video is obvious and the overwhelming public outrage is telling, but there are many questions that need to be answered. The ultimate questions are: Who is responsible and who will answer with his or her job? Because this is a job-costing mistake.