A UC Santa Cruz blog has posted what it says is the itemized list of charges on which the university based the $944 fines that it has assessed against students involved in last semester’s Kerr Hall occupation. (Photos of the document can be found here, with a transcript here.)

If this document is genuine, a few aspects of it seem quite significant.

First, though news reports based on administration statements have characterized the takeover as causing “nearly $34,000 in damage,” several of the line items on the list appear to be unrelated to physical damage to the building. The list includes a $1242.60 charge for the university’s lockshop to “check locks, panic bars,” a $121 charge for an “HVAC check out” that found “no damage to equip,” and a $242 charge for a check of fire alarms’ “signal history” that found “no problems.”

Second, many of the listed charges appear to refer to the cost of university employees’ labor. These entries include those listed above, as well as listings for carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and even $720 for Physical Plant manager Ron Davis‘ coordination of the cleanup. In all, only four of 19 budget lines refer explicitly to payments made to outside vendors.

Unless all of UCSC’s maintenance staff, including its managers, is being paid on a per-hour, as-needed basis, it would appear — again, if this memo is genuine — that the university is attempting to force students to reimburse it for phantom “costs” that cost the university nothing.

The blog Occupy CA reported yesterday that UCSC students are planning a Friday rally against the fines. I’ll have more as the story unfolds.

The issue of youth sexuality — who’s having it, when, what kind, how much? — is of endless fascination to adults, and despite strong evidence that teens are now becoming sexually active later and more responsibly than in the past, there’s always attention to be gotten by claiming the opposite.

Whether it’s spreading wild rumors about rainbow parties or trumpeting the latest research “proving” that young people are having wild, irresponsible hookups, youth sex sells.

Media coverage of one recent article demonstrates just how ridiculous such coverage gets. Twelve-Year-Olds Are Having Sex, blared one blog headline. The news site UPI led with US Middle School Youth Engaging In Sex, while the website Science Daily went with Middle School Youth As Young As 12 Engaging In Risky Sexual Activity.

The UPI lead set the tone:

By age 12, 12 percent of U.S. students had already engaged in vaginal sex, 7.9 percent in oral sex and 6.5 percent in anal sex, U.S. researchers have learned.

Wow. One in eight twelve-year-olds having vaginal sex? One in fifteen having anal sex? What the hell is going on?

Let’s take a look.

You don’t have to read farther than the article’s title — “Patterns of Vaginal, Oral, and Anal Sexual Intercourse in an Urban Seventh-Grade Population” — find the first problem with this coverage.

That’s right, it’s not a national study. It’s a survey of students from ten public schools in one American city. And it’s nowhere near a nationally representative sample — the group studied was mostly poor, and more than 80% black or Latino.

So does this mean that the statistics in the survey are valid for inner-city students of color in the South?

Well, no. It doesn’t mean that either.

Nearly half of the students in the surveyed schools were excluded from the sample, mostly because either they or their parents refused to consent to their being questioned about their sexual practices. So the study is further skewed on that basis.

Oh, and although the media coverage described the study as examining a sample of 12-year-olds, 45% of the students surveyed were aged 13 or 14, and the researchers found much higher rates of sexual activity in the older students. So contrary to the UPI’s claim that 12% of 12-year-olds in the sample had had vaginal sex, the study actually found that only 8.6% claimed they had.

That’s right. “Claimed they had.” The study was based on self-reporting, which is standard, but if you check out the data, you find certain suspicious trends leap out.

Take the anal sex figures, for instance. The study found that 6.5% of the sample had ever had anal sex. But if you break those figures down by gender, here’s what you find:

Nearly eleven percent of the boys, as opposed to just three percent of the girls, claimed they’d had anal sex.

That’s right. Boys were nearly four times as likely as girls to say that they’d had anal sex.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Eleven percent of seventh-grade boys answered yes when asked whether they’d ever had anal sex — specifically, whether they’d ever “put” their “penis in a partner’s anus (which means butt).” And more than a quarter of the boys who said yes to that question claimed to have put their penises in four or more butts.

Now, it’s possible, of course, that every one of these kids was telling the truth. But isn’t it also possible that some of them couldn’t resist the temptation to boast, or just to goof around?

Having once been a seventh-grade boy myself, I know which way I’d bet.

Admittedly, some high school students (including those who use drugs) are dumb. Most students, however, do not shed their brains at the schoolhouse gate, and most students know dumb advocacy when they see it. The notion that the message on this banner would actually persuade either the average student or even the dumbest one to change his or her behavior is most implausible.

This quote comes from Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in Morse v. Frederick, a student free speech case decided by the Supreme Court in 2007.

In Morse, a five-member Court majority found that a high school principal did not violate the the constitutional rights of student Joseph Frederick when she suspended him for unfurling a banner that read BONG HiTS 4 JESUS near school property.

Justice Stevens disagreed. He argued that the banner’s message was “nonsense,” and that even if Frederick had, as some justices argued — but Frederick himself denied — intended to promote illegal drug use, his suspension would still have been a huge First Amendment violation.

Stevens’ dissent, a ringing endorsement of students’ rights to free expression, was joined by two other justices. (Justice Stephen Breyer took no stand on the First Amendment issues raised by the case, arguing that it should have been decided on other grounds.)

Student speech is embattled in today’s society. If such speech is to be respected in America’s schools, Justice Stevens — who announced his retirement last week — must be replaced by a justice who shares his commitment to students’ rights.

Let us all know what you’re up to, what you’re planning, what you’re reading and writing! It’s a two-day smondaybration of activism!

Yesterday I posted about SFSU’s move to charge eleven student activists more than $700 each for costs relating to a building occupation on campus. As I reported, this week also saw a PR blitz from the UC Berkeley administration, which claimed that this year’s protests there have cost them more than two hundred thousand dollars so far.

Today, the blog Occupy CA is reporting that UC Santa Cruz is demanding that an unspecified number of students who participated in November’s Kerr Hall occupation pay the university $944 each in restitution.

Much more detail over at Occupy CA, including the following claims:

• Those facing fines include three one of five student negotiators, who were “uninvolved in the actual demonstration.”

• Students have been given little or no information as to the substance of the charges against them.

• Those singled out for fines and disciplinary action include only “a small handful of students handpicked by the administration.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the punitive use of fines against activists is a coordinated statewide strategy by California’s public universities. If readers know of other campuses that have taken this approach, please pass word along.

Tuesday update | The Santa Cruz Sentinel has the story, including substantial new details. UCSC officials have confirmed that 36 students are facing fines of $944 each, and that seven of the 36 are facing suspension, expulsion, or disciplinary probation as well. Payment is due by June 30, after which outstanding fines may prevent students from graduating or registering for classes.

The university claims that occupiers “overturned a refrigerator to use as a barricade, damaged communications equipment and left pounds of garbage,” but officials made no effort to assign blame for specific acts of damage in assessing the fines.

The Sentinel quotes UCSC professor Bettina Apetheker as calling the university’s treatment of the demonstrators “reckless, inaccurate, inadequately supported and unjustified.” Administrators, she says, have shown an “incompetent disregard for students’ futures.”