UC Santa Cruz Academic Senate opposes police deployment against student demonstrations

UC Santa Cruz’s Academic Senate finalized a vote this week calling on senior administrators to not use police to break up a pro-Palestine encampment and demonstrations. 

Although voting for the statement finished Wednesday, it began about a week before administrators called in the police last Thursday. Now that it’s passed, the resolution appears to be a largely symbolic gesture with little ability to compel change.

However, the vote still represents a high-profile public stance by the majority of voting UCSC faculty showing that they called on administrators to negotiate rather than use law enforcement going forward.

More than 70% of faculty who cast ballots in the online vote – 238 of 337 academic senators – supported the resolution, which called for UCSC’s administration to “refrain from bringing police to campus to break up, disperse, or arrest participants in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment or related demonstrations … commit to peace and dialogue when engaging with demonstrators, and to refrain from bringing armed law enforcement personnel to demonstration sites.” (Full resolution below.)

Another 79 academic senators opposed the resolution and 20 abstained from the vote. The Academic Senate leadership shared the results first in an email to all faculty senate members Thursday morning. 

The resolution’s passage comes about a week after the administration called in more than 150 police officers to clear the encampment at the base of campus and arrest 124 people – of whom 112 were students, three were faculty members and one a staff member. Eight are not affiliated with the university, according to UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason.

All faculty and some non-faculty members who sit on committees are members of the Academic Senate. The senate is both a governing body that passes nonbinding resolutions and also a system of committees operated by faculty. Patty Gallagher, the Academic Senate chair, told Lookout earlier this week that senate leadership wasn’t informed beforehand of the police action: “Nor did we approve it.” 

“While the resolution is not binding on the Chancellor or other campus leadership, it does represent a statement of principle and the democratic will of the UC Santa Cruz Division of the Academic Senate,” she wrote via email then. 

Gallagher didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. 

Hernandez-Jason wrote in a statement posted online and sent to Lookout on Thursday afternoon that campus leaders “strive to consult regularly with the Academic Senate.” 

“The Academic Senate has authority over issues related to university curriculum and admissions and provides consultation on a range of issues,” he wrote. “In the face of a permanent barricade of one of our only two campus entrances, and after multiple attempts to de-escalate and allow for a voluntary dispersal, we were forced to rely on the support of police intervention.” 

UCSC literature professor Chris Connery said he and several others drafted the resolution and finished the proposal on May 17 – almost two weeks before the May 30 police action. He said he and other concerned faculty members watched as administrators at other University of California campuses called in the police to clear encampments and thought a resolution would help discourage the use of police. 

“Our thoughts were that, we’d seen what had happened when a really serious police force, when big numbers of police came onto campuses around the country, and it seemed to really add to the violence, rather than settle anything,” he said. “So we wanted to see if the faculty were willing to get behind a statement saying, ‘Please don’t do this. Please pursue negotiations.'”

Connery added that some faculty considered calling for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Cynthia Larive if the resolution passed by a substantial margin and the administration called in the police. However, voting had not yet concluded until after the administration called the police.

Though a vote of no confidence by the senate would demonstrate strong faculty disapproval of the chancellor’s handling of the situation, it could not drive administration decision-making. 

A faculty group presented the resolution at a May 22 Academic Senate meeting. Voting began May 23, and closed this Wednesday, June 5, at 5 p.m. 

Connery said it’s unclear what could happen now since the resolution passed after police had already broken up the encampment. 

“As far as next steps go, I think people are meeting and talking,” he said. “I think that it’s still in the meeting and talking stage. ”

The resolution lists three pages of faculty members who signed on to propose the resolution for a vote. Two centers, the Center for Racial Justice and SEACoast (the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions) also endorsed the resolution. 

The list includes faculty from a broad range of departments including René Espinoza Kissell, assistant professor, education; Amy Krauss, visiting assistant professor, feminist studies; Lindsey Kuper, assistant professor, computer science and engineering; Aaron Bornstein, assistant professor, cognitive sciences; and Chris Benner, professor of environmental studies and sociology and the director of the UCSC Institute for Social Transformation. 

The Academic Senate holds quarterly meetings, the most recent of which took place May 22, when the resolution was proposed. 

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The full resolution reads as follows: 

“Be it resolved that the UC Santa Cruz Senate Faculty calls on our Administration to refrain from bringing police to campus to break up, disperse, or arrest participants in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment or related demonstrations. Painful lessons from campuses across the country, including at UCLA, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, have shown clearly that bringing police force to bear on political demonstrations has led to increased violence, and considerable harm to members of our community. Political protest is a valued tradition at the University of California, and the protection of this freedom, and of the health and well-being of members of our community, is all of our responsibility. We call on our administrators to commit to peace and dialogue when engaging with demonstrators, and to refrain from bringing armed law enforcement personnel to demonstration sites.”

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