Daily Archive

11:30 am | According to Twitter reports from @OccupyCA, there is a sit-in going on at the office of the chancellor of the University of California at Irvine at this hour. The feed reported two hours ago — around 9:30 in the morning, California time — that twenty students were sitting in.

A few minutes after 11 am it reported that arrests were imminent, but accorting to the most tweet, at 11:24 am, students outside the sit-in were barricading the building to prevent police from making arrests.

More as I get it.

11:40 am | A post at the Occupy CA blog says the sit-in at Aldrich Hall, the UCI administration building, began at 9:30. It reports that it’s a budget protest (not a response to the Irvine 11 arrests or today’s UCSD anti-racism day of action).

11:45 am | An update to the Occupy CA post links to a fifteen-point list of demands from the occupation. Most of the demands are budget-related, but the list also calls for an end to the outfitting of campus police with Tasers, the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms at UCI, and amnesty for the Irvine 11.

11:50 am | A new update at Occupy CA says that “police, administrators, and sit-in participants are barricaded inside” the administration building. A tweet from @kellyramsey says that at least two of the building’s entrances have been barricaded with dumpsters.

By the way, Irvine has seen a lot of action already this semester. In addition to the Irvine 11 arrests mentioned earlier, there was a library study-in on campus just last weekend.

1:10 pm | There are reports from two sources that between fifteen and seventeen people have been arrested inside the building, but as of about half an hour ago Occupy CA was saying that the presence of supporters outside had prevented the police from removing anyone from inside. The reports of arrests suggest that three or four of those arrested are service workers at the university — one of the protest’s demands is the rehiring of one hundred and fifty workers whose jobs were recently outsourced.

1:20 pm | Multiple reports indicate that protesters have blocked a street near the administration building with dumpsters. Latest tweet from Occupy CA says police have given order to disperse.

4:30 pm | Eighteen people cited and released at the scene. Given that protesters occupied and barricaded an administration building, forcing its evacuation, defying police attempts to remove barricades, and shutting down a nearby street, the fact that nobody was jailed is striking. Coming eight days before March 4, it seems quite significant. More on the implications later, but between this and the events at UCSD, this was a very interesting day at the University of California.

Today is the day that the UC San Diego administration set aside for a campus-wide discussion of the racist Compton Cookout party hosted by UCSD students on the weekend of February 13, but in the eight days since the administration announced today’s teach-in, events on campus have spiraled far out of the university’s control.

Tensions surrounding the aftermath of the party, high from the moment that reports about it first surfaced, rose dramatically last Thursday, when students on UCSD’s campus television station broadcast a show that mocked the protests and black students in general. No recording of the broadcast has yet surfaced, but one student was quoted in the San Diego Union Tribune saying that the participants in the broadcast had “called us niggers, and called us ungrateful, and ghetto and dumb.”

The station that ran the show is run by the UCSD student government, and the broadcast implicated other student media as well — the students who made the bigoted on-air comments were staffers for The Koala, a campus humor magazine with a history of racist speech. In response to the broadcast, UCSD’s student government president, Utsav Gupta, pulled the station off the air and implemented an immediate freeze on outlays to all student media. Gupta called the freeze a temporary “time out” while student government re-assessed its policies.

In the meantime the UCSD BSU has presented a list of demands to the campus administration, while students have called on other California campuses to stage solidarity actions today. A rally at UC Irvine is going on at this hour, with much more to come over the course of the day. Stay tuned…

1:30 pm California time | The situation is rapidly evolving, but here’s what I’ve learned so far. The UCSD BSU held a press conference before the administration’s “teach-in,” and that press conference was followed by a rally that turned into a march. When the official teach-in began, students staged a walkout, urging attendees to leave the administration-controlled space and join a student-led teach-in outside on the lawn. Reports from Twitter suggest that everyone left the official event to join the student one, and photos suggest that the student event, still going on now, is huge. Search “UCSD” on Twitter for a high volume of powerful tweets from many many participants in today’s events, and check back here later for my full report.

5:00 pm | Gathering news coverage and on-the-scene reports. More soon.

Thursday morning | So many things to say about this event, and its implications for the future of student organizing. Here’s one of them.

Thursday afternoon | Here’s my take on the free speech issues involved in the current UCSD crisis.