Top UC officials at a UC Davis town hall last Friday on systemwide police practices heard suggestions to disarm campus police units or even disband them altogether. But some who attended the forum raised a question about protester practices: Have they gone too far?

“This has gone on for too long,” said Quyen Le, a second-year biochemistry major. He recalled losing five to 10 minutes of writing time on a fall midterm when chanting and drum-beating demonstrators marched through Wellman Hall.

“I’m paying for an education, and they’re coming in and disrupting it,” Le said.

Charles Robinson, UC vice president and general counsel, and Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the UC Berkeley law school, made clear they were looking to strike the appropriate balance.

“How should the administration or police respond, or potentially not respond, to particular incidents of civil disobedience?” Robinson asked at the beginning of the Feb. 10 town hall in the UC Davis Conference Center Ballroom.

And, Robinson continued, recognizing the rich tradition of civil disobedience on UC campuses, what’s an appropriate response?

Robinson and Edley spent much of the afternoon listening as many in the audience of about 60 offered their answers.

UC President Mark G. Yudof appointed Robinson and Edley to review police policies and procedures around the UC system, in the wake of the police response to protests on the Berkeley and Davis campuses last November.

A Yudof-appointed task force led by Cruz Reynoso, UC Davis professor emeritus of law and a former associate justice of the state Supreme Court, is reviewing the campus incidents, while Robinson and Edley are looking forward — to avoid seeing a repeat.

Robinson and Edley conducted a town hall on the Berkeley campus on Jan. 31 and have one more to go, Feb. 28 on the Irvine campus. They also are reviewing best practices from around the country, and hope to present a report and recommendations to Yudof in March.

Possible recommendations

During the course of the two-hour town hall Feb. 10 at UC Davis, Edley and Robinson discussed some of the recommendations that are under consideration:

• Training for administrators in the workings of the incident command structure, to explain the consequences of the various directions that the administrators may give to the police.

• More training for police officers, on working in a university community and interacting with students.

• Having skilled mediators available.

• Establishing civilian police review boards around the system. Only one such board is in place now, at Berkeley. Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi is considering how to establish one on the Davis campus.

• Standardizing police protocols throughout the system.

Another possible recommendation: Requiring administrators to be on the scene of every protest where police are called in. Indeed, UC Davis has already implemented a new policy of assigning a “designated senior official” to major demonstrations. “This would help to ensure any decision to use force is consistent with academic values and campus culture,” Katehi wrote in a Jan. 24 letter to Yudof.

Disarm the police?

Associate Professor Krishnan P. Nambiar, of the Department of Chemistry suggested having a civilian security force instead of armed police. “A public university is not a combat zone,” he said.

In extreme cases, he said, the university could call in police from the city of Davis.

Edley cited the vast size of UC Davis, bigger than what the city of Davis is prepared for, and the value of the campus’s having its own Police Department comprising officers who reflect the values and concerns of the campus community, and who think of themselves as part of that community.

Campus police officers know how to deal, say, with a homeless person in the library, and they are happy to help, Edley said. “We want them to be different” than the city police officers, he added.

He acknowledged, however, the need for university police to get to know the students better.

Robinson said the police must create opportunities for more interaction. That is just what UC Davis is hoping for with the recent certification of seven more officers for bike patrol — an assignment that puts them wheel to wheel with a good majority of the student body.

Security and tolerance

ASUCD Sen. Erica Padgett, a third-year economics major, opposed the disbanding of the campus Police Department. As a student, she said, “I would not feel safe on campus if we did not have someone to protect the student body.”

Padgett said she welcomed classroom debate, say, on both sides of the abortion issue, but not if one side tried to shut down the other: “I would want to have my voice heard, and I would want the police there.”

Le, the biochemistry major, said he suspected many of the participants in Occupy UC Davis during the fall quarter came from off campus. “I feel that should be a security concern” — a reason why disbanding the campus Police Department would be a very bad idea, he said.

Bart Wise, assistant professor in residence in the School of Medicine, said the university should try to be very tolerant.

Robinson wondered how the university could translate “tolerance” into a policy.

The university’s official academic activities are not sacrosanct, Wise countered. “I think these protests are real learning experiences,” he said. “We have to recognize that this is a place where we are all trying to grow as human beings.

“Tolerance to these so-called disruptions is critical to our community.”

But, Edley asked, what if on the day of a disruption students and faculty have different learning experiences in mind? “Because not everything is under the control of the students or the faculty in that particular space at that particular time.”

Wise responded: “That is the moment when learning can occur.”

Edley said he still did not understand why one person’s privilege was better than another’s.

Wise gave in a bit, saying the privilege of protesters should not always trump. “But sometimes it should, and we are nowhere near the limits.”

Proper time and place?

Another speaker cited difficulty in getting her financial aid during December’s occupation of Dutton Hall. “There definitely needs to be a proper-time-and-place law,” she said.

Some people voiced concern about such restrictions, but Robinson pointed out the need to protect the university’s academic mission. He offered this scenario: Protesters stop a lecture by going to the front of a classroom and linking arms.

“There comes a point, what are you going to do?” he asked.

Beth Levy, associate professor of music, said she was “a little frightened” about police having a role in such a protest.

“It’s one thing if there’s a real question of safety or security,” she said in a follow-up e-mail to Dateline UC Davis. “But the idea that police would be called to engage with student protesters in a classroom setting raises a red flag. It’s faculty and staff, not police, who are responsible for the university’s academic mission.”

Robinson said the practice of linking arms is another point of contention: Some UC police departments say it is passive resistance, some say it is active resistance and thereby justifies a different level of force.

Another factor: Are the protesters seated or standing, or are they standing and moving forward?