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Eight people were arrested on Friday night at UC Berkeley after a group of several dozen marched on the on-campus residence of chancellor Robert Birgeneau. Photographs taken at the home the following day showed that lights and heavy planters had been smashed, and that two windows had been shattered. Police and UC officials said that members of the crowd had thrown flaming torches at police, police cars, and the home itself.

Early reports from both the university and activists described the attack on the chancellor’s home as a unified group action. An official Berkeley statement said that “a group of about 40 to 70 protesters” had “stormed” the residence, “smashing planters, windows and lights while shouting, ‘No justice, no peace.'” An account posted at the activist website Occupy California said that “the march quickly turned into a small riot” en route to the residence, and that “the crowd … began smashing lights, damaging windows, and breaking pots” once they arrived there.

But in the days that followed, information has surfaced that calls this version of events into question. A professor of education who was working in his office less than a hundred yards from the residence that night says that the crowd scattered only moments after arriving at the scene — his impression was that the property destruction that took place was “remarkably brief and perhaps spontaneous.” It “did not and does not strike me as sustained,” he wrote.

The character of the march to the residence is also in dispute. It was reported early on that protesters had dragged trash cans and newspaper boxes into the street while marching, for instance, but one eyewitness says that other march participants dragged them back to the sidewalk again before the police arrived.

The developing story of the eight arrests carried out that night reflects the ambiguity of the situation. Initial reports described six of the eight as non-students, but it has since emerged that four of the eight are students at either Berkeley or UC Davis, and that the remainder include a local journalist and a visiting doctoral student from New York. The journalist said in a statement yesterday that he was arrested while covering the protest, not participating in it, and that the first officer to approach him demanded his camera.

When the eight arrestees were taken into custody, they were booked for rioting, threatening an education official, attempted burglary, attempted arson, felony vandalism and assault. Bail was set at $132,000 — three of the eight paid non-refundable bonds of $13,000, and the other five were held in jail for four days. But on Tuesday the DA’s office declined to bring charges against any of them, and the five who were still jailed were released.

Charges may still be brought in the future, but for now, no charges are pending against any participants in the Friday night demonstration.

Asked about the DA’s decision yesterday, UC Berkeley officials declined to comment.

Update | UC Davis professor Bob Ostertag has a piece up at Huffington Post about the week’s Berkeley events, and much of it is relevant to the arguments I make here. Ostertag, calls the two arrested Davis students “wonderful students: thoughtful, inquisitive, respectful, and supportive of their peers,” says that people present at the demonstration have told him that the vandalism committed that night was perpetrated “by a small splinter group, and that the cops arrested the wrong people.”

The city of Pittsburgh is expected to give preliminary approval today to a one-percent tax on college tuition, intended to help pay for city workers’ pensions. Karl Smith, an Assistant Professor of Public Economics and Government at the University of North Carolina, says it would be difficult to design a worse tax structure than this — difficult, but perhaps not impossible. And he has some ideas for what they might try next.

Taxing education is a little indirect, he says. Why not impose a direct tax on literacy, using the money to subsidize illiteracy? Or tax good parenting to fund child abuse? My favorite suggestion, though, is his last — he proposes that Pittsburgh impose a recycling tax and use the revenue to fund “pouring motor oil into bodies of water.”

Alameda County prosecutors chose not to bring charges today against any of the eight individuals arrested at Berkeley last Friday night, when the university chancellor’s house was vandalized. Charges may be brought at a later date, but those of the eight who remain in jail will be freed by tonight.

Wednesday morning update | I’ve written a new post on the Friday evening demonstration that highlights how much is still unknown about what happened that night.

Linda Sue Warner, the controversial president of Haskell Indian Nation University in Lawrence, Kansas, is still holding onto her job. Sort of.

Warner, HINU’s president since 2007, has had a rocky tenure:

• Not long after she arrived at HINU she put forward a widely-condemned proposal to more than quadruple student fees.
• In August 2008 the university’s board of regents, citing irregularities in hiring and budgeting, called for Warner to be reassigned.
• In February of this year she was widely condemned for a bizarre incident in which she suspended university rules to force a student critic of her administration to graduate early.

Haskell is is operated by the federal government, and in September of this year Warner’s bosses at the Bureau of Indian Education called a time out. Warner would, they announced, be taking a leave of absence from the university, traveling to New Mexico to assist the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute with their accreditation process.

Now that posting is winding down, and Warner had been slated to take up her duties at HINU again next month. But yesterday the Bureau of Indian Education told the Associated Press that that’s not going to happen. Instead, she’ll be assigned to the bureau’s Oklahoma City regional office for an unspecified period of time.

HINU’s website still lists Haskell as its president, and the BIU has characterized Warner’s Oklahoma City posting as a temporary one, but the chances that Warner will ever resume her position seem to be getting more and more remote.

By the way, that involuntary early graduation story from February really is a must-read.

The Student Advocate’s Office, an independent office within the UC Berkeley student government, has prepared a blistering report on last Friday’s Wheeler Hall arrests, accusing the university of “egregious” misbehavior in its response to the Wheeler Hall occupation.

The report contends that the mass arrests at Wheeler Hall were planned from the start of the occupation, and that those plans were kept secret from the occupiers and the university community. It accuses the Berkeley administration of “misleading” the public, of negotiating in “bad faith” with the students at Wheeler, and of ignoring the “potentially dire consequences” of their actions.

I spoke on the phone with a representative of the SAO who confirmed the authenticity of the report, which was posted this afternoon at liveweek.net, the website of the Wheeler occupation. A short while ago I published a lengthy analysis of the report on the basis of that confirmation. A new note appended to the transcript at liveweek.net, however, now describes the report as a “leaked draft” and says that “the language in this document does not represent the views of the SAO.”

In light of this information I have pulled the long version of this post. I will repost with any necessary revisions when the final report becomes available.

Tuesday update: I’ve spoken with a second representative of the SAO, who confirms that the final report has not been completed. I’ll bring it to you as soon as it’s released.

Wednesday update: The report has been released, and I’ve posted a copy of it here. Full analysis soon.

Thursday update: Here are my thoughts on the implications of the SAO report.