Dear Chair Bisson:
The board of the Davis Faculty Association formally requests that the matter of the so-called “Davis Dozen” be considered as an agenda item by the Executive Council of the Faculty Senate. Specifically, we would like the Executive Council to ask Chancellor Katehi to make a public statement calling for the Yolo County District Attorney to dismiss the charges against the eleven students and one faculty member in connection with their actions at the U.S. Bank. The “dozen” were protesting the administration’s contract with the U.S. Bank, which allowed a private corporation to advertise on UC Davis student ID cards, which also function as US Bank ATM cards, thus delivering our student body to the bank as potential customers. This is particularly disturbing at a time when rising tuition is linked to rising student debt, from which US Bank profits. In our view, the actions of the “dozen” are to be regarded as acts of civil disobedience and political dissent intended to defend the public character of this university. Therefore, the protest at U.S. Bank was not simply the same as any other protest that might happen to take place on a university campus; rather, this was an effort to defend of the essential mission of UC Davis itself as a public university. Nor is the administration to be regarded as a neutral party. The protest targeted actions of the administration, and the charges were encouraged and facilitated by the administration, who allowed the protest to continue for over four weeks and then forwarded names to the DA for prosecution. We now ask the Chancellor to publicly reject this criminalization of principled dissent by asking the Yolo County District Attorney to dismiss all charges.
Sincerely,
The Board of the Davis Faculty Association