“We’d really like to lay out what our campus is doing in terms of protests and how we continue to respond differently to student demonstrations than how some of the other campuses have reacted,” said Alison Galloway, campus provost and executive vice chancellor. “We want to make clear that we have a very different approach towards dealing with student demonstrations, especially in light of what happened at Berkeley and Davis.”

In November 2010, UC Santa Cruz began organizing its first Demonstration Advisory Group (DAG) comprised of faculty, students and staff to review campus demonstration practices and policies. With no anticipation of the Occupy and March 1 demonstrations that would later engulf UC campuses in student protest, the need for specific campus demonstration policies only escalated with the police brutality incidents at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, which shook the system only a year later.

“At the time, no one anticipated the incidents last fall that emphasized the need for each UC campus to have appropriate, clear and consistent demonstration policies,” Galloway said.

Through the forum, the DAG hopes to address issues including communication before and during an action, the role of observers, campus surveillance policies, post-demonstration review of police performance and the student judicial process. Galloway said the DAG also plans to introduce new ideas toward changing the judicial system to better handle issues with students who have been charged with protest activity.

With UCSC’s long-standing history of student-led demonstrations, the DAG hopes to address and improve student, staff and faculty concerns through direct discussion.

“We have always had major protests on this campus, and every time we’ve had an administrator present at demonstrations in order to not rely on second and third-hand word,” Galloway said.

Galloway said she hopes students will come out and get involved with the discussion in order to improve policies directed toward not only demonstration-related issues but campus communication as a whole.

“We’re trying to come up with a structure to protect the rights of people to be able to protest and keep this campus as good as a place it can be,” Galloway said.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

In an attempt to foster dialogue between the university administration and student activists, executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway and other members of the UC Santa Cruz Demonstration Advisory Group (DAG) will be hosting a forum in the Porter Fireside Lounge on June 3. The forum is designed to provide a venue for students to share their experiences in past protests.

The function of the DAG, headed by Galloway and College Nine and Ten provost Helen Shapiro, was detailed in an email sent to the student body in April of 2011. The group is staffed by a mixture of administration, faculty and students on an entirely volunteer basis.

Though partially a response to last year’s Kerr Hall occupation, Shapiro said that the group has been in the wings for a few years.

“The former EVC was interested in starting this, but it’s been a combination of a new EVC, a push from students and faculty, and general dissatisfaction about what happened last year with Kerr Hall,” Shapiro said.

Galloway’s intent is to allow students to openly communicate with the administration about protest management and policy.

“[The DAG] is here to look at the policies we have in place to interact with demonstrations, how they’re regulated, how they’re surveilled, what sort of limits are set, how the police are involved,” Galloway said in an interview during the early stages of the group’s formation. “Essentially, we’re asking, ‘How do we help the people who are forming the demonstration and help them get their message to the people who need to hear it?’ If the message does not get through, then everyone’s time has been wasted.”

As the year draws to a close, the DAG stated in an email that the group will be hosting the June 3 forum to gather student input as it reviews university policies with regard to demonstrations and protests.

According to the email, “[the] DAG would like to have this information because we’re reviewing campus policies and procedures, in part because we see problems with them. We want to be sure we hear from students about their concerns and receive their recommendations for how to revise current practices.”

In an earlier interview, Shapiro expressed her wishes for the decision-making process involving protest regulation to be more transparent and inclusive.

“The hope is to not simply react. We want to have people who are concerned about the campus sitting down and working towards a better community,” she said. “That does not mean there won’t be differences, but our goal is to have a clear, fair procedure.”

Some have expressed their concern with the methods adopted by the DAG. Noah Miska, a College Nine second-year and member of the DAG, feels that the DAG fails to address the underlying problems inherent in student protest.

“The group’s focus is on how to address demonstrations, rather than how to address the structural issues that motivate students to organize those demonstrations,” Miska said.

A May 27 email to the campus community informed students of the June 3 forum and said that those who share and participate can choose to be anonymous.

“Neither any information you give at the meeting, nor your presence at it, will be given by any member of [the] DAG to anyone in Student Affairs or the campus police, nor would it ever be allowable in any judicial affairs procedure,” Galloway said in the email.

Scheduled for the last weekend before finals, the timing may be less than optimal, but the email explained that there are many more meetings to come.

“We realize that the timing is not ideal by any means,” the e-mail said. “This forum will not be the last formal opportunity that students have to give input to DAG, but it will be the only formal opportunity this school year.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Faculty, administration and students are attempting to better communicate information in the process of student demonstrations with the formation of the UCSC Demonstration Advisory Group (DAG).

In an email directed to the larger UC Santa Cruz community, executive vice chancellor (EVC) Alison Galloway detailed the formation of a new focus group. The group’s aim will be the examination of UC policy regarding student demonstration and protest. Officially titled the DAG, the group is still in its infancy. However, Galloway, who co-chairs the group with College Nine and Ten provost Helen Shapiro, said in a phone interview she has an idea of where she wants the group to focus its energy.

“[The DAG] is here to look at the policies we have in place to interact with demonstrations, how they’re regulated, how they’re surveilled, what sort of limits are set, how the police are involved,” Galloway said. “Essentially, we’re asking, ‘How do we help the people who are forming the demonstration and help them get their message to the people who need to hear it?’ If the message doesn’t get through, then everyone’s time has been wasted.”

Though the formation of the DAG is partially a response to last year’s Kerr Hall occupation, Shapiro said the group has been in the making for a number of years.

“The former EVC was interested in starting this,” Shapiro said, “but it’s been a combination of a new EVC, a push from students and faculty and general dissatisfaction about what happened last year with Kerr Hall.”

Staffed by a mixture of faculty, students and administrators (all volunteers — none of the DAG members are paid for their participation), the DAG hopes to solidify UCSC’s approach to student demonstration.

“With a lot of the demonstrations last year, we felt that we [the UC] weren’t handling them as best we could,” Galloway said. “There was a general sense that we needed to take a step back.”

Noah Miska, College Nine second-year and member of the DAG, agreed that the UC has done a poor job of handling student demonstrations.

“Students organize a demonstration in response to [the] administrators’ failure to address the top-down power structures that govern the UC. If the demonstration is in any way disruptive, administrators call the police and/or make claims to discredit the demonstrators,” Miska said in an email. “This inflames tension between already perturbed students and administrators incurs significant expense for the university and, most importantly, fails to address the top-down power structures that govern the UC. Students then organize another demonstration, and the cycle repeats.”

The DAG is notable in that it is staffed primarily by faculty and students.

“This group is not administration-based,” Galloway said. “I’m the only administrator on staff.”

The group, Galloway said, is intended to gather information from students and other interested parties to more clearly inform the UC on how to enact regulatory policy regarding demonstrations.

“We’d like to have a situation where each group [the UC and the demonstrators] comes together with a better understanding of how the other works, where we don’t have to see each other as necessarily opposed,” Galloway said.

Shapiro also said the UC needs to reexamine its protest policy.

“The hope is to not simply react. We want to have people who are concerned about the campus sitting down and working towards a better community,” she said. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be differences, but our goal is to have a clear, fair procedure.”

Miska is apprehensive about the DAG’s future.

“I’m only tentatively optimistic about the outcome of the DAG. The group’s focus is on how to address demonstrations, rather than how to address the structural issues that motivate students to organize those demonstrations,” he said. “I think administrators should be asking more broadly contextualized questions, like ‘Why do students, staff and faculty have no say on who sits on the Board of Regents?’”

In the initial email to the UCSC community, Galloway made note of the fact that the DAG would attempt to review the policy on campus surveillance. In a later interview, she said the reasoning behind photography at demonstrations should be transparent.

“If photographs are taken at demonstrations, we want it to be clear why they’re being taken, who gets to look at them, who has access to these photos,” Galloway said.

Shapiro also is in favor of increased transparency.

“Some policies are explicit, some aren’t,” she said. “We need to make it clear who’s in charge on the ground [during a demonstration.]”

Transparency seems to be the eventual goal for the DAG, but Miska says that he is doubtful of the group’s ability to change the structural causes of student protest.

“I think the best probable outcome of the DAG is that UCSC admins will be less likely to use police and the threat of physical force against nonviolent demonstrators,” Miska said. “The DAG is well-intentioned and is being formed out of genuine recognition that administrative responses to demonstration have been inappropriate. I just think that they fail to understand why those responses have been inappropriate.”