This statement was released today by Berkeley Law students. A downloadable pdf is at the bottom.

Realizing that batons, rubber bullets, and tasers cannot quell the campus community’s opposition to the Regents’ project of privatizing the University of California (“UC”), the Administration has resorted to a more subtle but equally vile method of coercion: UC is taking disciplinary action against student activists through a process that violates students’ federally guaranteed due process rights, including the right to notice of charges, the right to inspect evidence, and the right to counsel.

On January 13, 2010, a hearing panel of the Committee on Student Conduct shamefully upheld an ‘interim suspension’ placed on Angela Miller. The suspension bans Ms. Miller, a University of California, Berkeley (“UCB”) Junior, from campus property, from speaking with anyone affiliated with UCB anywhere at anytime, evicts her from her off-campus housing, and more. Not only does the suspension immediately and clearly violate Ms. Miller’s expression rights, due process rights, and California landlord-tenant law, but Ms. Miller’s suspension—and the Stalinist procedure that the UCB Administration used to uphold it—also show that UCB is willing to break any law, smear any student’s reputation, and arrest any protester to silence dissent.
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Berkeley Law Lecturer Stephen Rosenbaum is representing two students charged with violating UCB rules.

UC Berkeley law lecturer discusses the Office of Student Conduct from Josh Wolf on Vimeo.

Angela Miller was thrown in jail and held on more than $100,000 bail after she was arrested from a crowd gathered outside UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home. But even after the DA dropped all the charges against the eight who were arrested, the university is refusing to allow Miller to return to class.

No one has shown evidence that any of those arrested broke any laws when they joined a march on Dec. 10 that resulted in some property damage to the chancellor’s on-campus house.

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This email is circulating. The room for the meeting is confirmed to be Boalt 110.

**Important information about legal representation and support for
students facing Office of Student Conduct charges at UC Berkeley from
the 11/18, 11/20, or 12/11 occupations on campus or the demonstration at
the Chancellor’s residence on 12/11.**

This email is coming from a group of Boalt Law students that organized
around the UC strikes in Fall 2009. We are continuing to find ways to
support the student struggle and have partnered with a group of Bay Area
attorneys (mostly NLG members) to provide legal support, counsel, and
representation for students facing criminal and academic charges
stemming from participation in the events listed above.

We invite anyone fitting these criteria to join us for a meeting at
Boalt Hall on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 7pm. Room TBA. Attorney
client privilege rules require that only students who are facing OSC or
criminal charges from these events can attend. We ask that students not
facing charges not attend so that students can speak freely and
confidentially.

In order to start working with you, we will need a copy of your charge
or letter from Student Conduct indicating that you are under
investigation along with your basic contact information and scheduled
appointment and hearing dates. If you cannot make the meeting, contact
Nathan Shaffer directly (shaffer@berkeley.edu).

This meeting is for anyone facing charges. We can discuss a group
strategy, individual strategies, and other ways that we can offer
support. We will not turn people away and can provide varying levels of
support that correlate to the student’s need. This message is not an
open or unlimited offer of representation, but if you are interested
please attend the meeting. We are not charging fees.

Specifically, we are prepared to discuss assisting students with:

1) Representation at pre-hearing OSC meetings.
2) Representation in OSC hearings, insofar as the UC allows.
3) Challenging potentially illegal procedures in the UC academic
discipline process in court.

We are prepared to discuss both individual and collective strategies and
coordinating legal strategy with ongoing campaigns. If you are not
interested in a collective strategy, you are welcome to attend and we
can provide individual support. Therefore, it is important to meet or
contact us as soon as possible if you need assistance.

Thank you,

Nathan Shaffer
shaffer@berkeley.edu
Berkeley Law, 2011

Myopia has infected the Governor’s office, and once again, Governor Schwarzenegger has shown that he is full of catchy one-liners and little meaningful substance. In his final State of the State speech, the Governor exclaimed that California should not be the kind of state that spends “more on prison uniforms than caps and gowns.” He proposed a constitutional amendment to shift money from prisons to public colleges and universities and guarantee that at least 10% of the state budget be allocated to UC’s and CSU’s and limit state prison spending to no more than 7% of the budget. Sounds really great, right!?

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It is no great secret that the terminal crisis of capitalism is before our eyes: the welfare state, the bitter product of two world wars, the child of Hitler and Noske, wherein a certain social safety net was provided for a measure of social peace, is in the process of being forcibly liquidated by the exigencies of an incresingly bankrupt social system. This much is evident to all those who have a basic thinking capacity. And thus, those who are protesting for a defense of this transient historical form will find nothing here of value, nor even anything here addressed to them. Such people can protest all day for a return to the glory days they imagine, but since these halcyon times never existed anyways, one can see they will certainly have no success now. Rather we address ourselves to those who believe in any fashion in the “terminus of student life”; but not of course to open something so worthless as a literary polemic or discussion, nor to presume to give prescriptions or orders — all we do here is attempt a “generalization of insinuation.” For, to be right means nothing, what is important is acting in consequence.

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Or why non-violence discourse is destructive.

There is a growing commentary critiquing the blind discursive commitment to non-violence that permeates many aspects of on-campus resistance in California. FN1 In the wake of the assaults on Chancellor Birgeneau’s on-campus mansion, the hegemony of non-violent discourse was threatened and some insight into where constituent interests lie was provided.

On the one hand, we have an administration committed to violence — monolithic in its hierarchy and monopolization of force. On the other, is a loose consortium of students, faculty, and workers with some intersecting interests and goals. The former, the administration, has a clear goal: to support the privatization agenda being forced down the student/worker/faculty throat by any means necessary. The latter group has no unified ‘plan,’ ‘goal,’ or consensus about what is possible.
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