Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Fake Mark Yudof Resignation Site a Sign of Things to Come

I was sent this fake Mark Yudof resignation by another Boalt student who was momentarily taken in by the hoax.

The hoax becomes clear, however, when the letter verges on the surreal stating:

It is clear to me now that we must all do our part to avoid social death. In that spirit, I have decided to go back to school to study the history of social movements.

Yudof's office has already hit back via Twitter, stating, "News of my resignation has been greatly exaggerated."

After going to some of the sites linked from the hoax letter, I think we can anticipate students attempting to take over more buildings and generally disrupt the functions of the University on Thursday. There's no word on whether or not this will be a non-peaceful repeat like last Thursday's protests. The police behaved in an incredibly violent manner towards protesters who were generally peacefully assembled, with a tense stand off occurring at about Telegraph and Durant (I am guessing the police were blocking an advance down Telegraph to Bancroft).

The video also shows a few protesters breaking windows and knocking over a scooter (which is picked up after several of the protesters exclaim how uncool it was to have knocked it over). It would be my guess that those attacking public property are not protesting the UC specifically, but are likely anarchists (the face covering and breaking stuff in what was meant to be a peaceful protest are generally indicative of violent anarchists, at least in my experiences as a peaceful protester).

I'm not aware of any plans to picket the Zeb/Simon Hall entrance to the building, but there should be some sort of protest out by the fountain. There are likely to be more legal observers in place after the last protests on campus turned violent and hopefully there won't be the similar sorts of clashes and injuries to students that happened last time.

Labels: ,