An audio recording from last night’s pre-concert rally has been released, and it’s well worth listening to. It’s a female student who was arrested yesterday morning at Wheeler Hall talking about the arrests, the occupation, and the larger movement. She’s incredibly angry — you should know there’s a lot of cursing, if that bothers you — but she has every right to be.
The university should be held accountable for the decision to shut down the Wheeler Hall open university early, without warning, and in violation of previous understandings. They should be held accountable for the decision to arrest the students at Wheeler. They should be held accountable for the decision to give no dispersal order. They should be held accountable for the decision not to cite and release the arrestees locally. They should be held accountable for the decision to cart them to a jail thirty miles away, in another county, where they were held for more than eight hours.
Audio is here, and a full transcript, edited very lightly for clarity, is below.
Hi, my name is Allie. I just spent the entire fucking day in jail. I got fucking woken up at about five in the morning by UCPD. I came in at night, there were open doors. It was cops walking around, in this place, no problem, with open doors. Woken up, no dispersal order, nothing. Just said “you’re under arrest for trespassing.”
So we went downstairs and into the basement. We were held there. We were told we would be cited and released on the spot. When I was gathering my shit I had an opportunity to put on my pants and my coat and stuff, but I couldn’t take my bags. People had no shoes. They were in their underwear, some people, because they said they were going to leave us here and release on site. Not the fucking case.
We had San Francisco County Police, all of them here, we had Alameda County buses that took us out of here. What fucking jurisdiction is that? Then we went to Alameda County and we were processed there with UCPD helping with the process. I don’t know how this stuff works, but what the fuck was going on? Why were we not fucking cited and released here, why were we not fucking cited and released at the Berkeley jail? Why did we go to Santa Rita?
Eight fucking hours in jail. Fucking felt up by the female cops as the male officers stood by and watched as they touched our asses, as we lifted our underwires and shook our stuff. They fucking watched. They fucking continued this process of separating us, moving us into different jail cells, taking things away, lying to us, intimidating, threatening violence to us. Fucking bullshit.
Jonathan Poullard, Dean of Students, was here in the building when we were being arrested. What did he do for us, what did this university do for us, what does this university do for our community?
Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. Fuck the UCPD, fuck all of the police here.
We came in and we provided an alternative model for how to run a university. We provided an alternative model. We weren’t locking the doors. It was open. It was open for access to students to study in. Because they make unilateral decisions to do furloughs, to cut our library spaces, to cut our faculty salaries, to cut union workers, to do union-busting. How many classes were canceled this semester? Cutting libraries? So we open it up ourselves. And what do they do? They fuck us. They take us to jail.
Happy finals.
studentactivism.net 
41 comments
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December 12, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Student in 84 aparthied protests
I was held in jail at Santa Rita overnight two different times. Full 24 hour periods over 2 decades ago. You might say things never change. I couldn’t help but laugh at this. I’m 44 now. The inherent injustice of life continues — I hate to say. Gotta let go to some extent or you’ll just tear yourself up with rage.
That’s not to say I’m not still an activist, I am.
Good luck.
December 13, 2009 at 9:38 am
Dana
Oh, Allie certainly should be protesting, because it’s obvious that you haven’t been getting much for your educational dollars, regardless of the tuition rate. In seven paragraphs, she felt compelled to use the f word or one of its derivatives sixteen times, and the s word thrice more.
Tom Wolfe once described Gus Grissom’s speech as using ten nouns, five verbs and one adjective; it appears that such a description would fit Allie reasonably well, though she has demonstrated that she knows two, and not just one adjective.
I would think that the taxpayers of California, who subsidize the greater portion of Allie’s education, would like to see Berkeley students as actually being educated. At least from these seven paragraphs of her comments, there’s rather little evidence of that.
December 13, 2009 at 10:39 am
Angus Johnston
So the purpose of higher education is teaching people not to curse when they’re angry? Please. Give me a break.
December 13, 2009 at 10:47 am
Common Sense Political Thought » Blog Archive » Ten nouns, five verbs and one adjective
[…] I shouldn’t have, but I left a comment on the site: Oh, Allie certainly should be protesting, because it’s obvious that you haven’t […]
December 13, 2009 at 11:07 am
Dana
Yes, actually, it is.
A friend of mine once said that there are times when only the f word will do, and I agree with that — but those times are relatively few and far between. If the only descriptive language you know is vulgar slang, then the taxpayers of California are wasting their money in attempting to educate you, because you won’t go far, won’t be much of a contributor to society and the economy.
The taxpayers of the Golden State are paying a whole lot to subsidize your (plural) education; how do you think that they’ll react when one of the people for whom they are paying so much can’t string together a few sentences without resorting to profanity? Will they think that their investment in your education has been a wise one, will they be inclined to vote for more taxpayer dollars to go to the UC system to keep your tuition lower? When they see students complaining about rising costs resorting to damaging state property, thereby adding costs to an already strained system, will they think that you have a valid argument, or will they thionk that you are simply ungrateful for what you have been given?
December 13, 2009 at 11:31 am
Angus Johnston
I’m actually not a student in California. I’m a college professor in New York. And one of the first things I teach my first-year students is that an critique of a text that engages with its form to the exclusion of its content is a weak critique indeed.
Allie was angry, she was tired, and she was speaking extemporaneously to an activist gathering. Her choice of words — and it was a choice — reflected that context. You can choose to play gotcha, scoring cheap rhetorical points at her expense by tallying her uses of the word “fuck,” or you can choose to engage with the substance of her complaint. It’s up to you.
December 13, 2009 at 11:56 am
John Hitchcock
What I see:
And an expletive-laden hateful temper tantrum with little added value from a spoiled girl.
So we have criminal violence and a potty-mouth.
My youngest brother is a college professor as well, in Ohio. And he teaches English. I attended college in my aims to be a math teacher.
If one cannot maintain a modicum of self-control, perhaps college is not the place to be. Violent criminal activity? Zero self-restraint when trying to push an agenda? No reasonable person will value the opinions of people acting in that fashion.
Or: Don’t throw your two cents in a ton of chicken guana; nobody will go in there after them.
December 13, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Dan
Joan-
First off, completely unrelated event to Allie’s experience. She was not speaking of being arrested at the right, but rather being woken up at an unreasonable hour by police and told she was being arrested. Administration in this case is responsible for a horrible lapse in judgement and likely aiding the student cause (well, until the riot, but since a majority were not students, I’m not so sure about that)
And, should you go to any college campus around the nation, especially near finals, not to mention the additional circumstances here, you will hear the f bomb dropped incredibly generously. The additional stress added by the lack of proper sleep and the arrest only aggravates those circumstances.
Saying people who drop the f bomb excessively can’t be productive members of society is absurd and completely false.
December 13, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Angus Johnston
John, there’s a reply to your post below. I’ve fixed the problem with nesting so that all replies will appear where they should from now on.
December 13, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Dan
Excuse my mistake, I clearly combined or misread the name.
December 13, 2009 at 1:02 pm
John Hitchcock
Nobody said that. You are misrepresenting what people said. Unless, of course, it is your assertion that nobody can be a productive member of society until and unless that person gets a college degree. Is that what you’re asserting here?
December 13, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Dan
I combined your statement with Dana’s, my apologies. However:
“If the only descriptive language you know is vulgar slang, then the taxpayers of California are wasting their money in attempting to educate you, because you won’t go far, won’t be much of a contributor to society and the economy”
Clearly a) those aren’t the only adjectives she knows b) context is being completely ignored and c)the implication is that generous use of the f bomb somehow indicates decreased value to society, a non-sequitur and untrue. There is a huge leap from an activist setting to a professional setting and the way individuals conduct themselves.
December 13, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Dra
It is not correct to say that the state of CA is subsidizing undergraduate education; not only does student tuition now cover the cost of undergrad education, it now also subsidizes other university projects, like building projects. Moreover, the English classes and department is now so cheap to run as compared with the sciences that the humanities and social sciences are currently subsidizing the sciences and their preparatory work for the mIlitary industrial complex (among other objectionable things). These are some of the truths the admin would like to keep from the public by refusing to make the budget transparent. From a UCB insider typing on an iPhone with apologies for typos.
December 13, 2009 at 1:15 pm
John Hitchcock
That, I assure you, is an example of hasty generalization and, quite obviously, an untrue statement.
December 13, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Dan
John-
Clearly you’ve never been around students studying for finals who get frustrated when they can’t remember key information, or are getting sick of studying for tests. It’s called venting, and it’s a natural response. From my experience it really isn’t that gross a generalization.
December 13, 2009 at 1:20 pm
John Hitchcock
Clearly you didn’t read that I attended college. Clearly you’ve never been on a NCCAA-member campus during finals week.
December 13, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Dan
No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Trends are trends regardless of outliers. Continuing onward, these are also a minority of schools in the U.S., using a minority to try and prove a majority case doesn’t work.
December 13, 2009 at 1:44 pm
John Hitchcock
Dan, you’re going to get a hernia moving the goalposts like that. I gave you a large list of college campii to prove my point of your hasty generalization. And I pointed back to a statement I had previously made which preemptively falsified your accusation that I have never been around students studying for finals. But, like a good liberal, you moved the goalposts instead of admitting you were flat-out wrong. (Hasty generalization or overall liberal methodology? You tell me.)
December 13, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Dan
John
In case you missed it, I did admit it was a generalization, but one that OVERALL is fairly true of campuses around the country. I haven’t moved the goalposts, you simply gave an example where the generalization fails. Considering generalizations never apply to everyone within a group I failed to see how it was noteworthy, and said so.
December 13, 2009 at 2:02 pm
John Hitchcock
Ahh, but you did indeed move the goalposts here:
Taken in a vacuum, you may have a point with that statement. But your statement was not made in a vacuum but rather within the context of a continuing debate. So the context of the debate is important here. Your response was to my response of your statement (with a couple extra levels of response possibly ;) ). In such, it is necessary to be mindful of the context and comment-targets. You were not mindful of the context and shifted the comment-target after-the-fact. This was moving the goalposts.
(And threaded, or nested, commentary breaks down in big threads for reasons such as this, among other reasons. That’s why I disabled threaded commentary on my site and went with linear commentary.)
December 13, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Angus Johnston
John, Dan was speaking informally, so he engaged in a little hyperbole. He said “any college campus” when he meant “any typical college campus.” His meaning was clear enough, and his larger point was correct. What’s accomplished by nitpicking him to death?
December 13, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Dan
Thank you. Clearly I only recalled my implication and not my actual word use.
I’m use to nitpicking. It seems to be fairly common among internet debates. Of course, I’m sure there’s an example where that’s untrue, so I better be careful.
John, taken literally I may have moved the goalposts, however I feel it was clear that was not my intent. However, because the internet is a medium where implications are sometimes harder to catch, I don’t care all that much. However, Angus had it correct, I was trying to imply any typical college campus.
December 13, 2009 at 2:19 pm
John Hitchcock
Now that is a good example of an excepting qualifier to a general statement. I can readily accept that statement. And I can more readily accept in general terms overarching statements which contain qualifiers. But that’s not to say I won’t throw my two cents into the pile to disagree to some extent. Or to agree with the general viewpoint but disagree with the implications.
You see, I have a problem with the public education system in its entirety from K to PhD, and I have an overall problem with government funding of said broken system. That’s not to say all government funding is bad, but there should be limits, such as no fed funding period and local-only funding of K to 12. I have written an article or four about this, myself.
December 13, 2009 at 3:49 pm
david
I don’t see why the girl in this audio clip is so outraged by the arrests. An occupation involves trespassing. That’s part of the point of occupying a building, rather than sitting on the grass. Occupation as a tactic demonstrates that students are willing to raise the stakes, take personal risks, and interrupt business as usual. That’s why it’s powerful.
Of course, police coming in unannounced while students are sleeping is not a classy move, but what do you expect – tea and cake with your handcuffs?
December 13, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Mark
The occupiers had come to an understanding with the administration that they would allow them to stay.
December 13, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Dana
Dr Johnston wrote:
Is it? If you are seeking to persuade people of your position, doesn’t the use of a form which turns people off or leads them to conclude that you might not be the brightest or most erudite person around weaken your ability to persuade?
Form is part of content. That Allie was upset I was able to glean from her statement, but it turned into so much of a profane rant that any sympathy I might have had for her main complaint — that the overflow of removed protesters was taken away from Berkeley for processing, and that such was not what they were told would happen — quickly vanished.
December 13, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Dana
Dra, normally the infrastructure, including the building projects, are considered part of the cost of education. The physical plant people, who keep the buildings heated and cooled, who keep the toilets functioning, are part of the cost of educating students. The janitors who clean the buildings, the cooks whop prepare food at the various mess halls, the groundskeepers who mow the grass and rake the leaves, all are part of the cost of educating students.
I would be very interested in seeing documentation which shows how all of these things are paid for by tuition alone.
December 13, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Dana
Dan wrote:
Henry David Thoreau wrote, in his treatise Civil Disobedience, said that it is perfectly legitimate to engage in civil protest, even beyond the point of breaking the law, but that in doing so the protester should willingly submit to the legal consequences of his acts. If such meant that Allie and some of her compatriots were awakened at a dreadful hour to be hauled off for legal processing, well, such is life: when you engage in an illegal act to try to make your point, the consequences may sometimes be unpleasant.
December 13, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Angus Johnston
It is. Criticism of form is completely legitimate, of course, but criticism of form to the exclusion of content is lazy and facile.
You could have gleaned far more than “that she was upset” from her statement if you had chosen to. Take out every instance of the word “fucking” from it — cut and paste it into your word processor and do a find-and-replace — and the meaning is preserved intact. The arguments she makes, the questions she asks, are not altered. If you’re incapable of doing that, if the mere presence of a dirty word on a page renders you incapable of comprehending anything else that may be there, then the fault is yours as much as hers.
December 13, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Angus Johnston
I’m pretty sure that Thoreau was never sexually abused by his jailers. He might have been a little less sanguine about “legal consequences” if he had been.
December 13, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Angus Johnston
This comment raises criticisms that I’ve seen a lot around the ‘net recently, so I’m going to respond to it in a new post.
December 13, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Dan
Yes, but this wasn’t like they just “did it.” Administration was fully aware of what was happening, and negotiated to allow it to happen. Then, when they got concerns, rather than going back to the table and looking for a solution to an event well over 12 hours away, they went in and arrested sleeping students. This wasn’t your typical civil disobedience. Cops were allowed in and out and did not make any arrests. Administrators were consulted, and, from my understanding, also were in and out of the building. Not once did they warn students they were going to consider them trespassers. Not once did they ask students to leave. And not once did the administration try to sit back down and find an alternative to the program they were concerned about.
Administration may not have done anything illegal in this circumstance, but they destroyed the trust they had built up with the organizers of these actions, and hurt their own credibility.
December 13, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Dana
Sexually abused? As in, required to be searched for possible weapons? That happens in any arrest, and what Allie described was somewhat less intrusive than a real strip search.
It’s possible that she’d never have taken part in the Wheeler Hall occupation if she had thought, uh oh, if I’m arrested, I might have to lift my underwires and shake my stuff to prove I’m not smuggling in a knife or a joint. But those are the breaks: you break the law, and you are subject to arrest, period. I wouldn’t know why someone would think that because he was breaking the law for a supposedly good and noble cause, he’d be treated differently by the police than a street thug in Philadelphia.
December 13, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Angus Johnston
She said that the female cops “felt her up,” and that the male cops gawked while they did it. That may have been standard, by-the-book procedure, but you have no reason to assume that it was. You don’t know, and I don’t know.
Why assume that her complaint is unfounded?
December 13, 2009 at 7:01 pm
John Hitchcock
I saw absolutely zero sexual abuse in what Allie said. In fact, I was thinking she should be glad she was searched in CA instead of here in OH, where she would’ve been required to strip down completely, squat down with her knees spread fully, then cough twice. Standard inprocessing search procedures.
December 13, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Another Day in Wheeler « zunguzungu
[…] is here, and a I’ve taken this transcript from Student Activism, a really excellent blog I’ve just […]
December 13, 2009 at 7:10 pm
zunguzungu
Mark has it exactly right. The students who were arrested would have an strong entrapment case, since police were present all week (I know; I work in the building and I saw them there, all week). If they were trespassing, then surely the fact that the police waited all week to arrest them for it is a problem, right? Especially since the official explanation of their arrest was that they were *going* to commit a crime in the future. Anyone who wants to defend that legal reasoning in court, have fun with it. Which is why people like Dana would rather be shocked and appalled at the use of four letter words; what the university did was indefensible, so they change the subject. But it’s callous and dishonest.
December 13, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Dana
I didn’t assume that her complaint was unfounded; I stated that she was searched, as is routine for someone being arrested.
By the way, you’re the blog administrator here, right? The text in blockquotes, using Mozilla Firefox and a good monitor, is very light and difficult to read. Even the main text body font is grey rather than black, and can be hard to read. Some of your readers might appreciate a higher contrast font.
December 13, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Angus Johnston
She said she was “felt up” by the female officers. Not just searched, “felt up.” Now, maybe she was just using poetic license, but it sounds to me like she was alleging sexual misconduct on the part of the police.
December 13, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Angus Johnston
And yes, I agree with you on the color scheme. I’m working on it.
December 14, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Susan
Angus, the purpose of higher education is to teach people how to articulate clearly and concisely the reason for their anger and perturbation, then to sit down and, acting as real adults do, work to a reasonable solution to the problem at hand.