Every year college students in California gather and protest against rising college tuition rates. This year the campuses have been inspired by the occupy movement. Specifically at the University of California, tuition has almost doubled in recent years. Just this month, the California State Board of Trustees decided to increase tuition for next year by 9%. These protests that are typically peaceful took a different turn this year when police officers sprayed pepper spray into the protesting students. This video has gone viral and is causing uproar across the country. Many who have watched the video are pressuring the Chancellor, Linda Katehi to resign. The Chancellor apologized to the student body and is working to earn the schools trust back.
Most of my blogs have focused on human rights issue abroad and I thought it would be nice to focus on an issue that is close to home. The freedom to assemble for these students was taken away from them. They were performing a peaceful protest and the school police officers pepper sprayed them. There right to freedom of expression was also violated. I feel that in the United States we pride ourselves on all the freedoms that this country has to offer. However, there are still times when we do not provide these rights. It would have been a different situation if the crowd had turned violent and the police needed to use pepper spray to pacify the crowd. The police officers that were involved in the pepper spraying were put on administrative leave.
Do you believe that the University of California should take a stronger action against the police officers? Or do you believe that the pepper spraying can be justified?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/police-officers-involved-in-pepper-spraying-placed-on-leave.html
No, I do not believe that the University of California should take additional steps against police officers. Yes, I believe the pepper spray incident was justified.
ReplyDeleteThe students at the University were given the right to free speech. Eventually, the University decided it was time to put an end to the protest. The protest was occuring on private property without a permit to be at the site. If the protest occured on public lands they would have a legitimate case to sanction the Police. In addition, the students had been given warning and they were legally asked to cease and desist. The students decided to resist a lawful order from the police department. Once this occured the students locked arms and refused to leave. The Police, in the interests of safety, decided to use the pepper spray. The Police could have forcefully removed the students using batons and strong arm tactics. They chose to not do this and instead used the pepper spray. This act actually saved the students from serious physical harm. The students were breaking the law, so they were lucky they were not dragged into a police wagon and hauled off to jail in a seriously violent action. I applaud the Police for taking the route that they did.