Chancellor Katehi:

At town halls over this last week you have invoked the Virginia Tech massacre on multiple occasions to defend a need for a weaponized police forces on college campuses. When students and faculty are professing concerns about the campus police, I ask you if such a reference is relevant or appropriate.

As a native Virginian, I hold a deep conviction that the events of April 16, 2007 should never become a catchphrase to conjure up fear for a broad variety of campus safety issues. Clearly, the fears I felt in the crowd on the UC Davis Quad were entirely different to those of a school shooting and should be respected as such.

Not once on the day of the massacre itself or during the memorial services have I been comforted by the thought of more weapons on college campuses, regardless of the hands that hold them. In fact, the 32 deaths of students and faculty in 2007 have prompted legislation that limited the use of guns, not broadened their application.

I realize that “Virginia Tech” is now a phrase that describes the realities of administrating higher education; such notoriety has led to useful reforms such as the WarnMe system that alerts UC Davis students of safety hazards. Nevertheless, I would ask you and the UCD administration not to refer to the tragic events of another community in such an offhand manner. Just as language referencing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 should not be used to support the Patriot Act, I urge all of us to avoid utilizing the massacre at Virginia Tech to explain the unfortunate events on our own campus.

Perhaps Virginia Tech could instead serve as an economic model for UC Davis; Virginia public schools facing budget cuts have managed to keep tuition within a reasonable price range, which to me, is a far higher priority than weaponizing the police.

Megan Ammirati
Graduate student, comparative literature

This is yet another piece whose drum beats are as old as Methuselah. I for one would beg to differ at best or remain a skeptic at worse. Here is why: Most human population growth predictions say that the global population should stabilize by 2050 as more and more couples are having lesser number of children than their grandparents. The trend of negative or zero population growth that we see in countries like Italy, Japan, etc. will eventually filter down to the less developed countries, where there is maximum growth at present. Even in the worse case scenario, I doubt that with the new technologies available to us in crop improvement we will ever run out of food. We may most likely have a problem with food distribution from the food surplus areas to the hungry ones, but we will never run out of things to eat.

Another factor that food doomsday pundits do not take in to consideration is that man has only scratched the surface of the food pile as far as edible crop plants are concerned. The main food source for a very large number of the world’s poor and rich comes from only a handful of the crop plants and food animals. There are a number of plants out there that can be domesticated for food. Likewise, there are also a number of animals that we do not yet use for food. It is just a matter of developing a taste for them.

We now have tools such as biotechnology which can move desirable genes or gene segments, not only from one plant to another from the same family, but also from other species. In addition, gene transfer from the animal world is also now possible with gene manipulation — an antifreeze gene from Arctic flounder has been introduced into strawberries to extend their growing season in northern cold climates — which is why we get strawberries all year long. As we have seen with genetically-modified cotton, we can breed varieties of crops on which pests and diseases can make no impact, thereby increasing their yields manifold. The potential impact of these new technologies at increasing food supply globally is almost unlimited.

Look where we have come as far as computers are concerned in the last 30 to 40 years. We now have laptops that are as or more powerful than the main frame computers occupying an entire floor about 35 years ago. If the same brainpower is applied to food production, I am sure we have nothing to fear from the world population growth as the article suggests.

Adi B. Damania
Associate in the agricultural experimental station
Department of plant sciences

On Monday, the UC Regents meeting took place on four different campuses — UC Merced, UCLA, UCSF and UC Davis.

The regents gave students a chance to speak and share their opinions, and public comment was even extended for an extra half hour, which was good. However, this was followed by a decision to raise the salaries of multiple UC vice chancellors and UC lawyers. This was completely inappropriate given the theme of the students’ discussion.

Furthermore, the four-way teleconference was confusing and seemed unnecessary. The regents should not be afraid of students and they should have held the meeting at one location in order to make it more efficient. Protesters at all four campuses showed no suggestion of violence, and the regents should acknowledge this and take it into account when planning the next meeting. As people who make extraordinarily important decisions about the UC system, they should trust UC students.

Regents should create more opportunities for students to voice their concerns similar to the open comment session at Monday’s meeting. For example, we would love to see regents hold open office hours on campus, as was suggested at the meeting.

Overall, the extension of the public comment session was a partial success. Students had a chance to voice their opinions. Because students on multiple campuses took over the large conference rooms to have their own meetings, regents were forced to move to different rooms in order to continue the agenda. This interruption made the meeting less efficient and meant that the audience was not aware of  significant votes, such as the vote to raise salaries.

Regents should work hard before the next meeting to understand what the students are saying, and make their decisions reflect these opinions.

Chair of the UC Regents Sherry Lansing suggested that students and regents work together to ask the legislature for more money for higher education, which seems to be a step in the right direction. Both students and regents agree that higher education needs more state funding.

Regents need to make more of an effort to work with students in order to make their actions more effective.

During public comment at Monday’s Regents meeting, we learned exactly how much say we are allowed at this university: one minute’s worth per student. And, as students spoke, we saw how carefully the administration listens. While one student condemned police brutality on campus, Chancellor Linda Katehi stared intently at her lap, looking as if she were texting someone.

As the meeting showed, students have little real input into decision-making at our university. This is in part because the vast majority of members of the Board of Regents and top-tier administrators, including the chancellor, are appointed rather than elected. They don’t listen because they owe their places to the governor or the UC president –– not the university. Under these conditions, public forums become meaningless photo opportunities.

We can change that. UC Davis is a public institution receiving state funds. As positions which serve the common good, the office of chancellor and the regents should be democratically elected by students, faculty and staff.

If the chancellor were elected by popular vote, he or she would be forced to consider the opinions of stakeholders at this university before initiating punitive actions against protesters. We would not only see a decrease in the number of arrests on this campus, but we would also see more active involvement on the part of the chancellor. The threat of recall would encourage the chancellor to come, in person, and speak to protesters instead of sending out perfunctory e-mails after students have been jailed.

Democratic elections would also eliminate the pervasive sense of estrangement students have from the chancellor. Chancellor Katehi has little experience at this university compared to those she leads and, by her own admission, she needs to “get to know” us better. If elected from among the faculty, the chancellor would have a long history with his or her constituents.

An elected chancellor would have first-hand knowledge of working at this university. Now, we are governed by someone who has never taught a class here. We would not hire a department chair without experience at this school — why is it any different for a chancellor?

Indeed, the administrators of this university have few interests in common with the faculty, students and staff they manage. Chancellor Katehi will never have to worry about what happens when her class size or tuition doubles or when staff positions are cut in half. Without shared, material interests with the rest of the university, the chancellor remains aloof and abstracted from our struggles.

We already know what Chancellor Katehi thinks of this. Katehi took part in an international committee to assess Greek higher education and give recommendations for its reform. As Panagiotis Sotiris, a professor at the University of the Aegean, reports, Chancellor Katehi and the other committee members called for an “authoritarian form of Higher Education without democratic procedure and without strong and politicized student and faculty movements.”

The report Katehi signed onto argued that Greek universities should be “managed and overseen by an appointed, independent board of overseers.” Furthermore, the report advocated for a system in which administrators are chosen by “dedicated search committees” rather than the democratic decisions of the university.

Chancellor Katehi’s aversion to democratic self-determination gives us greater insight into why she felt threatened enough by the occupations to call the police. The occupations represent a form of direct democracy in which students, faculty, staff and citizens decide their futures outside of unelected oversight and control. These organizations are dangerous to the administration because they show us that, while the university authorities may need our money and labor, we do not need the administration to organize and manage ourselves.

Knowing this, we must demand a more democratic university system, beginning with the election of a new chancellor.

Contrary to what the administration may think, those most affected by decisions should have the most control over them. Unless we achieve that autonomy, meaningful dialogue is impossible.

JORDAN S. CARROLL is a graduate student in the English department. He can be reached at jscarroll@ucdavis.edu.