Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Protesting Students Get Pepper-Sprayed

I used to live in Los Angeles not too far from Santa Monica City College. As you might have heard, they're going to have a two-tiered tuition system/course structure and this is making many students irate. The cost to enroll in some courses (which happen to be the more desirable ones) offered at SMCC will be about $180. This is much more expensive than classes have been: $35 per unit for in-state tuition. On the one hand, I can understand that taking a college course for less than $200 doesn't sound like that bad of a deal. On the other hand, if you think about the increase in terms of a percentage, this is quite a hike! One might add that many of the people attending SMCC are from low-income families, first-generation college students, etc. Such an increase will prove to be prohibitive to many students.

Protestors gathered during a recent SMCC Board of Trustees meeting--about thirty of them were pepper-sprayed by campus police. This is disturbing and not the first time that protestors have been hurt recently. I wonder what readers think about students gathering at such meetings and what (especially my students in Philosophy and Public Issues) think about the act of protesting and how authorities should handle protestors.

This issue aside..... I want to mention that the administration at Pitt has encouraged students, faculty, and staff to write letters to politicians, attend events in Harrisburg, etc. in response to recent proposed cuts in the state appropriations to the Pitt system. If these cuts get passed, we will have over 100 million dollars in cuts over the last two years! I hope you impress upon your friends and families how important it is to participate in these efforts. And, of course, I hope you write letters and do what you can to counteract this assault on higher education.

13 comments:

Desiree` Lamer said...

I think with the limited amount of information you have given us about the event in California it is very hard to make a decision about what the police should have done differently or even if they did the right thing. Granted it is awful to hear college students who were standing up for what they believe in were pepper sprayed. On the other hand the police were doing their job, and for all we know the protesters may have become very verbal or even violent with the officers. I think that as long as the protesters weren't blocking any walk ways, if they weren't prohibiting movement of those not involved with the protest, and if they were assembling peacefully then they should have been aloud to protest. I also think the police have a job to do and they have to handle the situation with the training they have received and make an on the spot decision. They can't go home and think it over, its a here and now situation. I hate to see the increase in tuition at any college but I also respect the officers and trying to carry out their job. They were given the pepper spray to use when the situation calls for it and this may have been one of those situations. An example of where the police were justified in using 02 spray or pepper spray was the occupy wall street movement where college kids were pepper sprayed after they were told to move and unblock the sidewalk and they wouldn't. The police couldn't just wait around for them to move so they did what they saw neccessary and just.

Jesse Steinberg said...

Desiree, You make a good point about the limited amount of information available. I don't know what happened exactly, so I couldn't really say much.

I'm more interested in what people think about protesting in general--i.e., as an action aimed at bringing about political/social change. In addition, I wonder what readers of this blog think about how authorities should "handle" protestors, what amount of force is justified under what kinds of circumstances, etc. I hope this clears up the set of issues with which I'm concerned.

I think you (Desiree) bring up some interesting examples and you began to answer some of these questions I'm wondering about. I'm curious what others think.

Jacob Shepherd said...

I think authorities should train their police force to handle adversity better. Police are not sent in to inflict pain on people for disagreeing. They are sent in for crowd control. As soon as things start getting out of hand for the protesters (like if they start getting violent), then counter-violence should be a last resort. People in the U.S. protest all the time. The government has handled it better at times than others.

But the mantra of American authority figures (at least what it should be) is inflict harm only to prevent the harm of other people. If a crowd gets violent and starts hurting people (or potentially hurting people), then, yes, it is justified to use violence to get them under control. I advocate swift violence, though -- not prolonged beating or anything like that. Violence should only be used in so far as it can protect other people. It should not be one of the first resorts, as the police at SMCC seem to appeal to, from this short reading.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Santa Monica College wanted to be able to offer more courses to students who were having a lot of trouble graduating due to needed course being filled. Students would have to beg professors to let them into closed courses so that students could get the courses that they needed. So, the college, (given the fact that community colleges don't have the kind of endowments that the big universities have nor adequate funding from the state), wanted to charge students around $580 per course that would pay for the course offering. This would mean that some students from low income families would be unable to pay for the course and that, as a result, the plan would be biased in favor of those who could afford the extra cost. At this point, the president of the community colleges in California has put a hold on the plan to discuss it further and to give students a chance to weigh in.

Joe Burns said...

Personally I do not see protesting as a moral issue. Maybe it is and I am just not making the connection. However, I do feel that the way that protestors act and treat others as well as the way protestors are treated by non-protestors and law enforcement should be handled and treated as a moral issue. As in many other situations, I believe that instances such as protests and law enforcement involvement that encompasses moral issues should be handled in a way that focuses on intentions and motives. For example, to decide the morality of the treatment of the protestors at SMCC, the intentions and motives of the protestors as well as the police officers should be taken into consideration. If the protestors were gathered peacefully and not infringing on other people’s rights, I think that what the police officers did was immoral. I suppose this could be compared to killing someone. In the case of self-defense it could be morally permissible. However, killing someone for fun is immoral. What I am trying to suggest is that if the police did what they did in an attempt to protect themselves as well as other bystanders it would be morally permissible. If they pepper sprayed them for fun, because they have the ability to carry around pepper spray, and because they want to show off their "authority," their actions would be immoral. Simply put, depending on the specific circumstances of this situation, what was done may have been moral.
Joe Burns

Kristy Fithian said...

I think that protesting can be a very effective way of achieving awareness, but often times it seems the negative aftermath is the only news that is widely publicized. After reading the linked article, it seemed to me that the students protesting had every right to be involved in the meeting that would certainly have an effect on their futures although their seemingly unprofessional behavior needed to be managed.
I think that problems in protesting first stem from the size of the gathered crowd. The number of protestors present has everything to do with the level of turmoil or amity. This also plays an important role in how the situation should be dealt with should it get out of hand. It is much easier for people to move out of their comfort zone and get carried away when so many other passionate people surround them. I think it should be the job of security or police to recognize when this moment starts taking over. I do think it’s morally acceptable for these officials to take control of the situation to prevent harm and disruption from affecting others. I also think it is important that the minimum force necessary to control the situation is used so outbreaks aren’t overcompensated for. It is important to remember that often times being met with violence can lead to an increased rage if authorities take it too far. The balance is important to maintain, but I think is morally acceptable to control for an efficient society.

KelseyMilliron said...

I agree that there is not a whole lot of information given for me to make a decision on this exact issue. Although I am not saying that I think it was okay for the police to pepper spray the students, I also do not think the protest was right in the first place. I understand that college is very expensive and all students want to do is get a degree and better themselves. But just as the blog said Pitt encourages students and faculty to write letters against these budgets cuts and tuition increases. While I do believe in taking a stand for things you feel passionately about I also believe that there is a certain means in which you should go about doing things. In many cases protests are not only a disruption to the public but also many times progress into a riot. I think that letters or meetings would be a much more appropriate way of going about things. I do not think protesting is ever the right way to go about doing something or getting your point across. I think there are more professional and better ways to go about doing so.

Roland Cross said...

I think in situations like these our first amendment rights are being attacked. If protesters are not causing any harm, then they should be allowed to protest within a controlled environment. We all need to take a stand and make the government take action against the police officers or state governments who choose to bring violence to peaceful protesting.

The only way we can fix this situation is if we all make a stand about this issue. The only reason why authority feels the need to stop protesting is because they feel threatened. They don’t want people to take a stand for what they think is right. We can’t back down because they want to harm us. The second we allow them to take control, our argument or stance becomes weaker! Authority wants to be feared! We have to show them there is no fear!

Right now we have educated people who want to make a difference. These people are trying to hold on to the chance of getting a degree. People everyday are not able to continue their education because they can’t afford it. Is this right? I don’t think so.

Sherry Troutman said...

I think they should be allowed to protest as long as they're not really restricting people from getting from point a to point b like Desiree said--if they pepper sprayed just to stop the protest--then that's wrong because then the police were violating their freedom of speech.

Sherry T

Heather Costello said...

Being a police officer for several years and experiencing pepper spray first hand per my training I know that "being sprayed" was one of the most uncomfortable experiences short of being burned on a stove in my life. Yes spraying with pepper spray is lower on the "level of force" bracket of law enforcement BUT it is still a harmful use of force usually reserved for violent criminals that are resisting arrest or ceasing to stop the process of a criminal act, still not to be used casually. Example of appropriate pepper spray use are: stopping an out of control drug addict from attacking a police officer,stopping two people that are fighting after several attempts to physically pull them apart have not been successful. With this being said and having the information given above unless I see that ALL of the students were physically violent PRIOR to the spraying.. the police officers are in the wrong. There are a few questions I would like answered so I could comment further. What time of day did the spraying occur? How long have the officers in questions been on the force? Why? Police officers at the end of a long shift tend to be impatient and young power hungry cops tend to be "trigger happy" just dieing to exert some authority on someone. These last two comments are from personal experience. Anyone willing to give me more info???

Michael Spong said...

I feel that people have every right to protest when they believe that they are being wronged. The pepper spray being used, should only be done if the protestors are causing bodily harm to others. This is supposed to be a free country. We should be able to stand up and fight for what we believe in!

Kevin Morgan said...

Protesting is a wonderful thing. It is a good example of unity among citizens who want a major change to occur. I think the students had every right to protest because of the increased price to attend classes. I probably would have been there with those students if I were to attend that school.

The campus police had no right to pepper spray those students unless they were violently protesting, which I highly doubt is the case. There are several cases where the police have attacked protesters for no apparent reason other than the fact that they are protesting. In Oakland, CA, a police officer threw a stunning grenade into a crowd that was helping up an unconscious protester. That protester was hospitalized with severe brain damage. This kind of stuff just baffles me. Unless the protesters are rioting, there should not be much resistance by the authorities.

Casey Hoffman said...

I find it unacceptable for the police to use pepper spray on the students if they weren't causing any physical harm to anyone. Protests happen all the time, it's meant to be annoying to the people they are trying to influence. Most of the time there is no intent to hurt anyone in these protests, they're just fighting for something they believe in by being so annoying that they have to be noticed. This is different than say a city rioting because their team lost a game or something like that. I think the police are in the wrong and should be in trouble