Town Hall Liveblog Kicking Off at 1235pm Today

Dean Edl*y will be having a conversation with the student body today at 1245 in Booth Auditorium.

We will be covering all of the action right here at your one and only Nuts and Boalts.

Andrew and I will both be blogging. I'll be kicking things off and Andrew will likely continue on this post.

James and Andrew here:

12:35 - Booth is cold as usual.  A few people are here and are generally impressed by Booth's new seats.  As discussed, Andrew will take over for me about halfway through (or if I start to talk too much).  Or he might post intermittently.  We're figuring out the structure as we speak.  Any bets on what Edley will say?   I'd expect that the crowd is pretty pro-99%, but you never know.

12:35 - Some clases have been cancelled for tomorrow due to the general strike in response to the UCPD's brutality and the general UC response to the protests.

12:36 - Some professors are asking media services to film the classes, but ironically, the media services people may strike too. So some classes might only have audio recorded.

12:38 - M*ndi is here.  I'm going to ask her about the action figure idea as soon as I have the chance.  Auditorium continues to fill up.  No one has any illegally sized signs.

12:44 - No DE in sight.  Maybe he's waiting to make a grand entrance.  Booth is mostly full.  Not sure how many people it holds.  There are too many Castro baseball caps in here for my taste, but that's a personal problem.

12:45 - Right on time DE makes his way to the front.  Several professors are also in attendance in the audience.

12:47 - And by on time, we mean fiddling with mics for a few minutes.

12:48 - DE just spent the last few moments talking to one of the Student Regents.  He opens by saying he has nothing prepared, but wants to make a couple of points to get things started:

- He's watched several of the videos and he's read several things and most of what he saw was "pretty standard protest fare, but some of what I saw was shocking and unacceptable and just not my university."  This gets applause.

- He can't understand nor imagine the circumstances that could have created any justification for using batons and he certainly saw nothing of that sort and couldn't even imagine what the justification might have been.

12:50 - Apparently, both DE and the Chancellor were at the same event in Shanghai. DE's not sure how familiar the Chancellor was with the circumstances.

12:51 - DE: "I have been criticized for acting as though I believe the law school is a world unto itself. and I plead guilty to that. But one of the consequences of that is that we have zero control over the police."

12:53 - Things last week didn't go as well as ordinarily because the Alameda County Sheriff's Office don't have the same set of sensibilities and relationship with our law school folks and there were some harsh words exchanged by M*ndi and KVH and the police.

12:55 - DE has several responsibilities:

- Giving us the best legal education in the world.
- This doesn't include being stopped and questioned and interrogated; feeling threatened; feeling unsafe and DE will be taking steps to communicate with the police and the Chancellor to communicate what he believes to be unacceptable police behavior towards our students at Berkeley.
- Also is responsible for being a teacher and he's going to get pedantic on our asses.

12:55 - I'm going to posit that the Chancellor didn't have any independent sources of information apart from what the police said when he sent out his infamous "linking arms" e-mail. Also, YouTube sometimes doesn't work in China, so he may not have seen the videos. [AFong]

12:55 - DE: As a tactical matter, sometimes you want to get in trouble with the police, so "be mouthy".

12:56 - DE makes it clear that cops can misbehave when you act out towards them and that this is something that DE knew growing up and we should as well.  He's now asking us to be lawyers and put ourselves in the shoes of the cops and that Berkeley students, from their point of view, must be "privileged, entitled kids" and the students have an enormous amount of power over the police.

12:57 - When students file a grievance the life of that officer can be hell.  DE is now saying we have more power than the cop does.  I don't think this is accurate, but I think he means in a societal sense.  So the chances they'll act out are high because we have more societal power and they have more on the ground power.

12:59 - There are serious problems with the training and disciplinary measures within the department.  There are huge problems with the way they coordinate with outside agencies.  But, what about deploying riot police at all? That seems like a UC position and not simply a UCPD position.

1:00 - Incidents of police misconduct are not as significant as the movement itself and the issues and that we move past this as quickly as possible and try to change the world instead of Cal.  This is some great advice.  But, the police are deployed in order to keep the status quo.  Oh man, the comments are now open.

1:02 - And of course it's immediately a personal anecdote.  And now the Dean is being told he was mocking.  He's been told he's consistently mocking at town halls.  A few people booed, basically this individual is super pissed because of all of the problems at Cal ever.  Fee hikes have been brought up and now he's being called out on how the cops are taking orders from the administration.

1:03 - For those not clear, shit has just gotten real.  DE apologizes for his tone as he does not mean to mock and he wants to be clear.  This is the right way to deal with the criticism.

1:04 - DE: "The 99% issue in the larger scheme of things is more important than, uh (long pause), is this about fee hikes or the police misconduct?"

1:05 - Commenter: You're trying to tell us about police misconduct as something we don't know anything about. "We live next to Oakland" DE: Maybe you're more of an expert than the rest of the people here.

1:07 - DE: "I disagree with you about the fees. If you want to talk about the fee issue, we can talk about the fee issue." DE thinks this is distinct from the general education policies of the state and the federal government (and this is what, he thinks, OWS is talking about). But "he has to manage for today while thinking about tomorrow."

1:08 - We've moved on to another commenter who wants two things:

- Wants to have assurance that regardless of what kind of influence you think you have with the police that you are expressing your displeasure with what has occurred.  Who do you plan to talk to?  What do you plan to say?
DE response: Spoken with the Chancellor and the President of the University and he will write something in addition.  I'd like to see it in a big media outlet in the Bay and on the internet.  He expects that the chancellor will act.  He doesn't know to what extent the administration was involved in the tactical decisions or the clear rules of engagement for dealing with the protestors.  It doesn't appear that they have clear or good rules of engagement.  "I do know the administration does not want a semi-permanent encampment on the campus."

1:13 Commenter thinks everyone is united against the brutality (take that anon) and she wants the Law School to take a leadership position on this issue.

1:14 - DE immediately waffles about what the school's role should be regarding this issue.  Faculty are encouraged to make statements and DE needs to think about what he should do publicly.

1:15 - DE contrasts "publicly" berating the Chancellor about how to do his job with quietly advising him.

1:16 - DE does not think linking arms is violent protest and disagrees with the Chancellor and how do we respond to campus leaders making statements like this?

1:17 - Comment from the peanut gallery:  "it sounds like DE wants to think about some things. wasn't this his forum for expressing what he's thought about?"

1:17 - DE talking about China now and rule of law. Concern about how vague rules chill speech. Likewise, unclear what is acceptable and unacceptable here. DE will press for clarification about the linking arms issue and where line should be drawn.

1:18 - DE clarifies - If you're engaged in civil disobedience, remember they can arrest you (that's the point).

1:19 - Everyone gets more than one question, apparently, as we continue to make sure we tell DE all of the ways he was slightly wrong or over broad in his statements. Commenter complains about how protesters are being dismissed as hippies or otherwise ignored.

1:21 - DE says those are terrific points and agrees.  "Don't go crazy trying to fix this school- think about out there."  DE was never that into campus.  I also would have liked to see more UC students at Oscar Grant Plaza instead of at Sproul.

1:22 - DE says go to Sacramento to protest how the UC's are being treated. (You can take Amtrak)

1:23 - DE: "I am not being mocking. Okay, so saying that I'm not mocking is mocking." But he explains faculty is frustrated that people are protesting here and not in Sacramento. "You care enough to protest only when its convenient."

1:24 - DE: Berkeley is #2 in leading research university. And Berkeley has more Pell Grant recipients than the entire Ivy League. Would love to be part of conversation about how to have more of an impact, but it is "not a simple job."

Commenter: We would be more willing to take this to the administration if we didn't feel like you viewed us as the enemy.

1:26 - Basically, the students want more handholding about how to change stuff from Edley.  We're going to have a planning meeting.  It seems like this is a step forward as long as we don't use that whole meeting to attack straw man DE positions.  DE wants the movement to be led by students.

1:27 - The mic is stuck on one side of the room.  Let the left side speak!

1:28 - Now we're going to argue more about what actually happened and how the students "were prevented from walking through the campus" and DE clarifies and apologizes.
Hey BHSA, remind him about that planning meeting next time you see him.

1:29 - Everyone is getting emotional.  DE's response wasn't quite right because the full facts weren't talked about by DE.  DE reiterates what he said at the beginning of the talk.

1:30 - DE says I don't get the point.  DE says he'll send the letter.  This is the kind of thing that makes DE pissy.  And he's getting pissy.  And some of the crowd is yelling that they're not getting support.  He's getting blamed for an inaccurate interpretation of what happened and he didn't provide all of the facts.

1:31 - Both students who were confronted were latino and there were racial slurs used by the police towards the students.  DE was not aware of this and gets called out on for not speaking to the students about what happened.  The students are not ok and are not traumatized.  DE should have first reached out to them instead of just going ahead with what he thought he knew.  DE apologizes and says the student was right.

1:32 - These students were singled out, they were alone and they were humiliated in front of their own school.  DE's comments about "power" come back to bite him in the ass because they weren't clear.

1:33 - DE agrees with almost everything accept his complete culpability for sending the memo without knowing all of the facts.  Now that he has more information he will send another memo.  DE is getting called on the fact that he didn't email from Shanghai before talking to us.  As he gets additional facts he'll send out another memo.  This seems to be a "either you're with us or against us" situation in Booth.

1:35 - DE is getting called out on his "consistent attitude towards the students" for what the new commenter says is "mocking" and that the fee hike cannot be separated from the 99% or the police brutality.  I feel like we're missing the point here.  Instead of getting DE on board, we're insisting on attacking him.

THIS JUST IN - All students granted amnesty if they were arrested.

1:36 - Commenter says DE doesn't care about anything we say.  Why even hold the meetings?  DE holds them because he wants to respond when stuff happens and that students what to hear from him even when they disagree.

1:37 - DE agrees that fee hike issue and 99% issue are the same.  He doesn't agree police misconduct is the same, commenter interrupts DE and clarifies.

1:38 - "Expressing your views is not identical to having political effectiveness."  In this circumstance DE thinks it's preaching to the choir and it's better to preach to the infidels (in Sacramento).

1:39 - DE is trying to get more money for the students so that the law school can use the money in place of lost California state revenues so we can stop having future increases.  He cannot cut back on tuition without revenue to displace it. The reason he was in Shanghai was to push executive education programs that would raise revenue.

1:40 - Having campus protests about fee increases doesn't help Edley.  He wants more pressure on Sacramento.

1:40 - DE: This has been going on for several years now. And generations of students have made the same point many times. DE says he get the point. Having another meeting to tell him what last year's students told him does not improve the politics of opportunity.

Commenter asks for more transparency about what DE is up to. DE says he'll do that.

DE - "Students should do more than administrators do."

1:42 - A whole bunch of hands went up after that.

1:44 - J. Ste*n, student regent - Regent meeting has been cancelled. This is bad. This is also going to double or triple student passion at future regent meetings. Ste*n re-routing buses from regent's meeting to Sacramento. Invites DE to come with them.

Chancellor sent e-mail about granting amnesty to students arrested while this was going.

More transparency requests - want more info other than at town halls.

1:46 - Commenter doesn't understand how the administration can justify riot police and why there's no encampment being allowed.  I am not sure if DE will be able to answer this question.  DE is getting bashed for not seeming "upset" enough.

1:47 - Now the students have taken over, finally, and we're just going to talk to each other.

1:48 - Can we please move on from this "you haven't sounded" right BS?  Wanting DE to respond at exactly the right pitch just seems counterproductive.

1:49 - Someone finally says, "Yelling at Dean won't fix the problem," and some people clap.  Some people sort of clap.  People are definitely afraid to clap for moderation.  I know I am.  DE cannot be our "avatar" which is an awesome word, but a shitty movie.

1:50 - DE: I can't be your "avatar" in attacking the Chancellor or Regents. Most effective use of Dean's position to speak in measured tones and to speak the truth. As such, anything I say can't express student's passion. Not my job. My job is to be effective.

1:51 - Student: What expectations should we have about our safety at tomorrow's strike?

DE: If I were in your shoes, I'd be very puzzled about that. I'll try to get some guidance from the police department and chancellor.

DE: Take your Cal ID with you! Police will definitely be concerned about trouble-makers from Oakland. See head bashing and murders in Oakland. Of course, this has nothing to do with Occupy, but police are concerned about non-protesting troublemakers trying to get in.

1:54 - He's being told he's mocking again.  He's being accused of calling students "nutty."  He says he's being unfairly attacked.  He said it was nutty to attack members of the staff as uncaring.  He's right.  There's no reason to personally attack DE.  It does nothing for the conversation and when you hear it for the 10th time it gets distracting to what's at stake here:

- stopping police brutality on campus
- continuing the 99% movement.

1:56 - Commenter: The time that the law school isn't going to take a position on this has passed.  Working group with everyone working together and making public comment.  DE: That's a great idea. Yes it is.  This is what we need to be doing.

1:57 - Staff witness saw people get pepper sprayed and is telling us about it.  She lends her support to the students standing up for public education.  She commends us for our courage and now we all applaud ourselves/her/both?

1:58 - Now we're being thanked!  Not sure who is thanking us, but he's glad we came.  So am I.

1:59 - A lot of people came here wanting an emotional response and they didn't get it initially, but we appreciate all of what was said and that things continue to build and be positive.

1:59 - That are actually quite a few staff members floating around hear. Saw Bamb*rger and T*lley listening in.

2:00 - DE: Explaining "nutty" comment. Staff stayed after hours to chastise police and make sure there were no further incidents affecting students. So when he received communications (in Shanghai) from student groups accusing law school of not doing enough, he though it was nutty, if not worse. Distinguishes between central campus and law school employees.

2:02 - Prof. Alp*r - Re. creating committee to work through police conduct - this was done in 2009 by Wayne Br*zil. Hard to reconcile video with conclusion of that report. Asks people to look at that report and see how to build on that.

Re. faculty members not expressing support publicly - Many members of our faculty were appalled and wrote directly to the Chancellor to protest. Also, Prof S*mon wrote a blog post.

DE - There is a petition circulating among faculty about no confidence vote in Chancellor.

And we're done!