The Last Blog

Dear Member of the UC Davis Community,

I am writing to you a third time because I’m afraid my earlier letters did not convey just how deeply felt is my contempt for your intelligence. I would also like to engage in a little more blatant hypocrisy, try to cover my ass some more, and maybe get in a few more vague threats.

I am deeply saddened that a number of students chose to draw pepper spray into their eyes and mouths from a canister being held by one of our heroic campus police offers. Furthermore, it pains me to see the video of our brave men in uniform being savagely threatened by belligerent acts of ground-sitting, as well as by an angry throng brandishing Apple products as weapons.

In light of these events, I feel I owe you an explanation. I have been supportive of and even encouraged our students engaging in admirable acts of protest and dissent.  Acts such as: staying inside, eating at the cafeteria, and not bothering me. But this week the protests took a dark turn. Tents got involved. In order to protect the health and safety of our community from these tents, the protestors were alerted that they would have to remove them. I even sent them a letter — a LETTER! — and am of course therefore blameless for all subsequent events.  (‘Cause of the letter.)

Even still, yesterday’s events are disturbing.  None of us can be proud of them. Therefore, I’ve formed an investigative panel comprised of students, faculty, and pepper spray manufacturers.  This panel shall convene immediately, and then, in sixteen years’ time, report its findings to me (or my successor if I manage to find a better position by then.) It should be noted that if I do not like the panel’s findings, the panel will be pepper sprayed.

As I am clearly a fascist hack who does not possess the awareness to know that I should be embarrassed to call myself an educator, I lack an understanding of irony. That is why I will draw to a close by professing how concerned I am for the safety of students even after being responsible for unprovoked brutality against them that sent at least one of them to the hospital.  And finally, I’d like to end with a thinly veiled threat.  Something that hypocritically touts a respect for free speech and basic rights but implies that if you keep trying to protest we’ll just come down on you like a fucking hammer again, like, while the university has the responsibility to develop the appropriate environments that ensure the practice of basic freedoms, by no means should we allow a repeated violation of rules as an expression of personal freedom.  Yeah, let’s just go with that.

See ya later, alligators! (And yes, this should be take as a threat that I will release hungry alligators on protestors.)

Sincerely,

Linda P.B. Katehi

Chancellor

(PS Please force me to resign! I’m awful!)