Friendly Look: France's 2 goals against Japan

Check out Marie-Laure Delie and Wendy Renard's two sweet goals from a July 19 friendly against Japan:

Shamefully, there were scarcely any French fans at the semi-final at the World Cup - this was in spite of the fact that the match was played very close to the French border. A jump onto the So Foot's Équipe de France forum provides a handy lesson in what ordinary French fans think about the women's squad. For example, I just learned how to say "Hey, the girls aren't horrible" and "Fuck, they don't know how to mark for shit" and - my favorite - "It's not sexist for me to say that a game full of tits and ass sucks." Actually, that's all from the same con. There are fans of foot feminin. I've been in the stands with them in Montpellier, where you can watch women's matches for free just about a mile in from the Mediterranean.

The French women's team is very, very good.

These are more complete highlights, with very enthusiastic commentary:

Find more videos like this on Womens Soccer United

USWNT & France dive into the deep end of the Olympic pool

When the US women square up against France tomorrow (noon EST), they will be facing one of the tournament's toughest opponents. Les Bleues lost the 2011 World Cup semifinal to the Americans and players didn't hold back in expressing their anger at the result. Louisa Necib put it plainly enough to L'Equipe: "The worst is that we were better than them."

As luck would have it, I was in the team's hotel lobby when the more beautiful team (as they dubbed themselves) rolled in after that match. They didn't look defeated at all. They seemed, in fact, defiant.

As it happens, US women were staying in the same hotel and the post-match party was in a hall just off the lobby. They piled out of the bus exhilarated, jubilant, radiating with joy. Abby Wambach had a halo around her head.

Necib, Elodie Thomis and the ascot-wearing FFF entourage glowered at the doors behind which the USWNT celebrated their win. It was clear they felt robbed.

The US won on the strength of their counterattack. They did steal the win. The USWNT have a different kind of skill than that for which the French team is known. It's the classic match up - physical strength and strategy against skill on the ball.

My overall take: France is capable of winning the whole thing. Winning a tournament is the only thing they haven't done, and that's probably their biggest obstacle.

Germany is out thanks to the shitty IOC/FIFA qualification process. Nigeria, which wears down every team it plays until someone finally sends them home (thus doing important work for everyone left) has been set back years by mismanagement. England and Brazil will make it out of their groups. But Brazil has not looked right recently. They could implode. It's not impossible. Something is rotten in São Paulo and if they don't take home a medal the players should freaking strike.

Japan are of course world champions and their group looks not so bad - South Africa is weak and inexperienced. Canada's performance in the World Cup was underwhelming. Japan v Sweden (7/28) is obviously a match to watch - their World Cup face-off was a nail-biter.

France and the US are in a group with the ever mysterious North Koreans - who by all rights should not be at the Olympics, having been banned from the 2015 World Cup for doping and not having been subjected to testing in their qualifying matches. Thanks FIFA!

Columbia are also in this group: they have scrap. But if France and the US don't make it out of this group, it'll be a freaking scandal. Either because one was beaten by a serious underdog (with some exciting young players) or because one was beaten by a squad that's been banned for doping. But events shouldn't play out that way: teams like North Korean, violated and abused by their management, are not usually able to pull out the big win.

tomorrow we will see a little of this (look how relaxed she is - and those eyebrows!)

versus a little of that (see her American hustle!)

I. Can't. Wait.

Winner: Roller Derby as Queer Feminist Sport

Bless The Pet Shop Boys. In advance of their performance at the closing ceremony for the Olympics,  they've released a lovely portrait of the London Rollergirls. This is the version of women's sports that I know & love!

No Justice, No Peace in College Sports: More on Penn State

I'm jumping into the Penn State mosh pit! In this week's column (Why the NCAA Sanctions Are Just Dead Wrong), Dave Zirin takes the NCAA to task for the $60 million dollar fine and post-season ban that it leveled against Penn State. Zirin isn't arguing that the program shouldn't be punished: quite the opposite. His argument is with the role that these sanctions play in the political theater of college sports, supporting the NCAA's self-assigned role as divine authority over the kingdom of amateur athletics.

I can see the point. As a culture, we have a tendency to turn to colleges and universities as if they were Meta-Parents. We wait for the NCAA to step in and punish its children. But the assignation of that kind of authority to almost completely unsupervised structure goes hand-in-hand with the abuse of that power. (Think: FIFA)

The problem is that the NCAA is a meta-version of the Penn State program itself. That organization has had full contact with so many forms of abuse of power and authority in college football especially that its attempt to claim some kind of moral high ground here is nauseating. 

That I would feel queasy about it is something. Penn State football is the Scientology of college sports. Let'em go down. But I have a couple things to add to Zirin's critical look at the NCAA's actions. 

Zirin expresses concern for Penn State as a public institution. He writes, "The punishment levied by Emmert was nothing less than an extra-legal, extra-judicial imposition into the affairs of a publicly funded campus." At least some of Zirin's criticism is directed at this - the idea that Penn State is a public institution, and that the NCAA is here interfering with publicly governed resources. I absolutely agree - but the problem is big, deep and complicated.

Not all public universities are the same. Penn State is so beholden to the financial teats of alumni wealth and the commercial payoff of big time sports that it turned a blind eye to years of sexual abuse. And as the Freeh report makes clear, the whole of the university leadership conspired to keep the story under wraps. Worse, they actually helped Sandusky into his position at a youth outreach program whose relationship with the university would provide the architecture for his access to victims.

Worse, Penn State's cover-up of child abuse was staged while the university was also suppressing complaints about the homophobia of one of its other coaches (Rene Portland, a Paterno protégé). For about two decades athletes were kicked off the team, and staff were silenced. The administration ignored protests of faculty, staff and students. But then an exiled player filed a Title IX complaint: and the campus faced a losing fight against the feds. The settlement produced by that complaint required all supervisors, coaches, staff, administrators to attend educational meetings about reporting harassment and abuse. The university was getting a big lesson in compliance - which it ignored. I heard from very good sources that Paterno attended at least one of these policy sessions, arriving late and plainly showing his irritation.

But back to the defense of Penn State as a public university. Public education is not what it used to be. In 2012, about 14% of Penn State's budget was supported by public funding - this is a reflection of decreased public support for all of the Commonwealth Campuses (Penn State is the flagship campus of a network that stretches from Erie to Scranton). 

That figure goes hand in hand with increases in tuition. Penn State's State College campus has the highest in-state tuition of any public university in the United States ($15,250/year in 2011) and it has held that distinction for quite a few years. (See, for example: "Should Public Universities Behave Like Private Colleges," in Business Week Nov 14 2004 and Penn State's 2011/2012 "budget breakdown.") The fact that Penn State is a public university doesn't mean that it serves the mission we associate with that term "public education."

The NCAA is concerned about the value of the brand and the stability of the organization's power. Penn State officials are worried about the same - they are not thinking about Penn State as a part of the public system. And the state's elected officials aren't thinking about Penn State as a public resource either: they've been working for years to privatize the whole system. 

It has been a long time since the leaders of public universities acted like stewards of the state commons. Just look at what happens when one does: UVA President Teresa Sullivan was ousted by a Board of Trustees for doing just that.

Anyway: I keep returning in my own mind to the public outrage regarding Sandusky. That outrage appears in exact proportion to the fervor of the public's investment in college sports as some sort of Oz where the playing field is leveled by scholarships, where gender inequity was banished by a single legislative act, and where things like rape are aberrations and not in fact part of the same culture that fetishizes paternalistic, macho authority. "Jo-Pa couldn't possibly have known!" becomes "We can't talk about this!" becomes "Nobody needs to know!" We turn to "JoPa," then to the paternalistic structures of the university, then the NCAA - each an exponential replication of the same institutional psychosis in which people imagine that these people actually care about us. 

I take Zirin's anger to be about that - that an independent report and an NCAA sanction might be mistaken by the public as justice, or as change. It is, in fact, neither. Rage on, sister.

Olympians to Watch: Mary Kom

India's Shot at Gold, Rahul Bhattachary profile of the boxer Mary Kom is a terrific introduction to one of the best stories in the the Olympics. My favorite section of Battacharya's article:

FOOTAGE OF HER fights is not easy to track down. The national broadcaster Doordarshan, private sports channels, her own agents, Olympic Gold Quest – nobody can supply it. After a fortnight of hard pursuit, a solitary bout emerges on an unlabelled cd in the boxing federation office from a mass of discs in a paper bag. Another is found on Jimmy’s hard disk in Manipur. They are from Podolsk, Russia, 2005, and Barbados, 2010, both world championships.

The bouts are shot on single hand-held cameras with no commentary. They have the air of an underground activity, like 19th-century prizefighting.

But amateur boxing—or Olympic-style boxing, as it is beginning to be called—is a very different beast from prizefighting, then or now. There is no prize money, no pounding music or showboating mcs, no showbiz bright lights blazing around the ancient glamour of blood. Nobody dies in these bouts; knock-outs are rare.

Especially in the lighter categories, the boxers dance on the dazzling borderline between fisticuffs and fencing. They feint and prance and lunge to find openings off which to score. Scoring is a subjective and contentious affair: at least three of the five judges must instantly concur that a punch is substantial and delivered by the “knuckle part” of a “closed glove” to the legitimate target zone, between the stomach and the head, on the front or sides of the body. Without an electronic scoreboard, the audience would be lost.
Even by the standards of pinweights, Mary is so quick that judges regard her bouts as about the hardest task in the women’s game. At Podolsk, her opponent is a Korean (the difficulty level of this bout she recalls with the Indianism “fifty-fifty”). To watch Mary, 22 years old and 46kg light, is to watch the physical equivalent of a raconteur of irrepressible wit and repartee. It feels like pugilism.

In the breaks, the women’s coach Anoop Kumar rubs down her arms and legs. There is something wonderful in this unselfconscious athletic intimacy among countrymen who might be segregated by gender on public transport; in a country, indeed, where women boxers were initially asked, in the interests of modesty, to wear t-shirts under their vests.
As the clock ticks on in the contest, something raw cracks through the balletic Brownian motion. Grunts can be heard, the odd wild haymaker appears. There is something more existential at stake: boxing, where metaphor is meaningless because here it is what it is. Mary has never felt pain in a ring, or fear; those are areas she forbids her mind to go. What she does sometimes feel is the title of her favourite song, “Lonely”, by the Senegalese pop star Akon. Early in the last round, she throws a strong right off-balance to the head of the Korean, which forces her into a standing eight-count. The vulnerability in her opponent flares like a rage in Mary’s movements; she stalks her nervous prey around the ring, showing the killer instinct that figures in every appraisal of her.  - Rahul Battacharya, "India's Shot at Gold" in Intelligent Life (July/August, 2012)

You can get another great introduction to her here, in this BBC profile of the fighter:

Keelin Godsey, on being a genderqueer athlete

Watch this. Remarkably candid conversation.

Major League Soccer Statement Not So Major

The official apology from the MLS:

During the latest episode of the ExtraTime Radio podcast on MLSsoccer.com, one of the hosts -- Simon Borg -- made inappropriate remarks regarding female fans of Major League Soccer.  These remarks were unacceptable and in no way reflect the values of MLS, its clubs, players, staff, or MLSsoccer.com. We apologize on behalf of our organization for those remarks.  Respect for diversity is a core principle of MLS and we are proud of the diversity of our League and its fans.

Mr. Borg will be suspended from his position at MLSsoccer.com for seven days, effective immediately.  All MLS employees undergo diversity and sensitivity training on an annual basis, and Mr. Borg and the entire MLS Digital group will receive additional sensitivity training promptly. (MLS statement on the league's page)

This is clearly a corporate memo designed to shove the whole problem onto Borg, and hope it goes away. It lets all the other guys off the hook, which doesn't seem entirely fair to me. Doesn't that show have a producer??

There is something about the invocation of "diversity training" here that makes me cringe. What a mood killer. If diversity were so important to the MLS, why does the ExtraTime team look they way it does?

The Sex of the MLS

Masculinity is a complicated thing. This is what we learn from listening to "Losing Proposition," the April 30th installment of Extratime, the MLS's podcast. At the program's conclusion, one of its hosts (Simon Borg) launched into a bizarre rant about how serious female fans are a real turn-off. This is quite rightly causing a stir - and not just because it's offensive.

[The MLS has responded to complaints by replacing the podcast file with an edited version, lopping off the offending segment, described below.]

It's newsworthy because the guys who host this program (Jason Saghini, Nick Firchau, Greg Lalas and Borg) work for the MLS and represent the league. Jezebel's story hits the right note, so I'm going to skip the obvious (it's sexist and diminishing) in order to describe the broader context of the conversation which facilitated Borg's comments. Those remarks didn't come out of nowhere - it was actually the second week that the program featured a conversation about soccer and the bedroom.

At the end of  "Losing Proposition," the hosts respond to emails from listeners. These emails take up the previous week's discussion of a question from a fan who confesses to watching soccer in bed using a Kindle Fire that he bought for his wife as a gift. "Am I a bad husband for this? How much time do you spend watching soccer with your wives, partners, etc.?" It's a question and an answer. Clearly, if he wants sex it's probably a good idea to stop watching soccer in bed. But maybe he doesn't want sex, at least not every night. Maybe he's happy watching soccer, and it's nice to have his wife in bed next to him while he does so. Is that OK? Does that make him less of a man? That's at least one way (my way) of reading the question.

Anyway, at that point the hosts invite listeners to email advice about soccer and love, because clearly the two are at war.

The controversial April 30th discussion revolves around this set of emails from fans. The hosts mostly rehash platitudes about sports bachelors and soccer widows. They talk over one email from a fan whose wife found him asleep in bed, clutching his iPhone, on which was playing a Union/Chivas match. As his wife tried to pry the phone from his fingers, he popped awake and said "Hold on, this game is about to get chippy."

They read an email from a fan who observes that a lot of women go to games - that, in fact, you see a fair number of straight couples at MLS matches, on dates. They all seem taken by this "development."

People should not be surprised by the fact that there are women in the stands, and that people go to soccer matches on dates. Romantic comedies, for example, routinely stage date scenes at sport events - not because it's exotic but because it's typically American. That instrument of social coercion known as 'the kissing cam' exists because sports has been fully integrated into the rituals of heterosexual courtship. One viral video, for example, features kissing couples at an LA Kings game.

Anyway - rather than talk about the fact that a lot of women watch soccer, that women are a part of the MLS fan base, that the whole soccer-or-women choice is a ruse - the Extratime conversation turns back to the guy in bed with his iPhone.

Why, Simon Borg wonders, was this man watching the game in bed? He then describes this guy as forced into the bed not by fatigue, but by his wife. "There's a problem with the relationship already, if you feel forced, or compelled to be in bed." Borg doesn't let this idea go - that men are being forced into bed. "The thing about the guys with the thing in bed...How does it work? Are you ordered 'come to bed'? And so are you trying to sneak a Kindle or an iPhone to watch the game?  [Almost screaming now] Why don't you just get up and go to your TV or go sit at the kitchen table?"

At this point one of the guys tries to turn the table on Borg, and suggests that he seems pretty invested in this notion that these listeners don't want to be in bed with their wives. It's intense.

This takes us into the program's finale. They read an email from a passionate, committed female fan ("Elizabeth from Portland") which affirms that yes, soccer can actually be a part of a person's relationship - and that, yes, there are women out there who are superfans who participate in fan culture. The other participants in this discussion narrate how their soccer-watching fits into their personal lives. It all sounds really normal. They discuss how it can be nice to have a relationship with someone who "gets" your sport. Then Borg says the following:

It's fine if you're a female and you want to be a super-fan. Clearly go for it, that's your choice. But there is something to be said for how appealing that might be to the other sex. Having a woman that's such a fan, like painting your face, tuning in to every podcast. I don't know how many males would be into that.

It's cool for women to be into it. It's great that in Kansas City there are a lot of women in the stands, it's great, but for the guy who wants maybe a serious relationship... If you are following just casually, but if you're such a die-hard, I don't know, it comes a point that it is a bit of a turn-off.

To their credit, his interlocutors try to argue with him - one sounds incredulous. Borg pushes his point and tries to make the other guys confess that, yes, secretly they are turned off by passionate women fans.

They settle into a little talk about whether or not they "have a problem with it" (a woman's passion for the game). One of the hosts confesses he's "never dated a sports girl. Ever, ever, ever." (TMI!)

I'd say Borg should be fired, except I think they all bear some responsibility for that conversation - I'm not sure such scapegoating accomplishes much in the long run. Better to have a feminist on the panel, forever - someone sharp enough to call him out properly and shift the discussion. 

Sure, Borg's a problem: but so is the architecture of that whole conversation in which Borg performs the role of saying what none of the other guys have the "guts" to say. That's his job, and pretty much every sports program seems obliged to have one person play that role.

Extratime is featuring female fans of the MLS on next week's show, which is great. But given the  stupidity of that entire discussion of sex and soccer, I wouldn't be surprised if the MLS apology went something like: "No, really - we think you're pretty!"

My take-away from this story: The men who run MLS harbor a wish. They wish that the MLS was like English soccer was in its heyday. Guys like this long for a time when men were men, and the game was (somewhat) more honest and when fans were hard core. But they also know that's silly. They grew up with the culture of the game as it is here - they grew up fending off the bullshit, xenophobic weirdness of mainstream sports hostility to the beautiful game. Official MLS masculinity is embattled, conflicted.

If Borg felt he needed to assert that a man can't love a woman who loves soccer as much as he does, it was perhaps because he doesn't think the American soccer fan is man enough to love her back.

So the insult here is not only to women soccer fans. It actually an insult to the entire soccer-loving community - as if somehow loving the game means that you aren't actually up for loving itself.

Maria Mutola, footballer

Maria Mutola is one of the world's greatest athletes. The 800 meter champion (2000 Olympic gold medalist, World Champion in 1993, 2001, 2003 etc) competed in 6 Olympic games and is often cited as the best athlete in this event. The 800 is notorious in track and field because it's technically a sprint: requiring speed and endurance, it's a grueling, even cruel, race.

Mutola is now coaching Caster Semenya, who recently qualified to represent South Africa in the 2012 Olympics. Mutola (who is from Mozambique) has lived in Johannesburg since 1999. This 2011 video profiles her as a member of the Mamelodi Sundowns women's team. This is a nice look at Mutola's relationship her two great loves. Mutola started off playing soccer with boys and, like many women athletes, she was recruited to track and field because it is one sport in which there are opportunities for someone with drive and talent. I just love seeing a picture of Maria Mutola with the caption "striker" - as if in her sleep she dreams not of crossing the finish-line first, but of slipping a ball into the back of the net.

States of Suspension

Readers should already know that the WPS suspended the league for this upcoming season. (Some reports on the decision: Sports Illustrated/Associated Press; All White Kit; The Guardian.)

To say that the league has struggled would be an understatement. It's been plagued by the usual headaches of a nascent sports league - mismanagement, outsized ambition, financial troubles, finicky owners, fickle fans, crap media. Add to that the burdening of women's soccer with the unrealistic expectations that accompany women-centered enterprises: Because it's women's soccer - we perhaps expect that people might be more broad-minded and progressive. We all let our guard down as we approach the women's game. That's one of things many people like about it. (It feels less corrupt, less cynical.) And it can amplify our sense of betrayal.

Some people get involved with women's sports because they believe in its viability as both a communal space and as a sustainable business (note the word "sustainable," not "profitable"). Others, entitled by their wealth, enter into the sports world looking for something else to own. Owning a team becomes an occasion for swaggering and self-righteous posturing. Worse, because it's sports, many of these sorts of people are reluctant to think about the good practices that need to be established to make a team work, beyond winning games.

That attitude ignores the game's realities: the stakes here for individual players are very low. Most would make more money doing almost anything else - they'd be less exposed to injury, too. Because the pay is so low, it is important that the team provide basic forms of support for its athletes - and that the work environment be professional.

The conversation about the WPS's decision to suspend the season took an interesting turn recently when a player came forward with details regarding her experiences playing for magicJack - easily the league's most troublesome member. Ella Masar was involved in a players' dispute with magicJack ownership. The post World-Cup period was rough: star athletes were returning with the mandate to save their home league. Masar stood with the rank and file players who'd been subjected to irrational and inexcusable treatment from the team's ownership. MagicJack players like Masar got caught between a rock and a hard place, as they were made to feel like the league's survival depended on their silence regarding what they were put through.

[Read Masar's statement: No More Silence]

Athletes who stand up against abusive managerial practices are routinely isolated, even by teammates who are grateful to them for their intervention. Although players might agree that things are bad, that things need to change, the conflict brought about by the effort to do so is almost unbearably stressful for most people. The burden of that kind of conflict tends to fall squarely on the shoulders of the victim - even if people feel that the victim is doing what must be done in speaking out, they also tend to wish that the whole thing would just go away. And it's easier to banish or diminish a player than it is to speak out against (never mind get rid of) the team's owner or manager. This is true, in fact, in any work environment. (Or, frankly, any playground - in which the bullied and harassed kid is the one who becomes the pariah.)

Add to this the fragility of the entire situation: magicJack needed to stay in the league for the league to continue. The owner of the team explicitly held this over the players' heads - they had no right to complain because if they did, they were going to take out the whole league. They were going to ruin things for their teammates. It was blackmail, plain and simple.

I read that story and wondered what's the point of a pro-league if it's only sustainable with bullying like that? Is it really a pro-league if a team interferes with an injured player getting proper medical treatment? How is that professional?

Meanwhile, as I wade through the laments of US women's soccer fans, I wonder about the pervasive wish for a wealthy patron who might save the league: Ellen DeGeneres, Nike (because they have such a great record when it comes to labor issues?), AEG, whoever. Isn't this how Dan Borislow wound up owning magicJack in the first place? He came in like a white knight, promising to save the league with a great team, etc.

[See espnW timeline of Borislow's involvement; "Dan Borislow, once a savior, now a pariah as WPS suspends the league" from Sporting News.]

I am reminded of a turning point in my own professional life. At some point in my 30s, I realized that if I expected some parental figure to sweep in and sort out my problems and clear my obstacles for me, that expectation might be the very thing that was most in my way. Athletes know the truth of this in relation to their game - but do they in relation to their work off the field?

It takes some time to figure out what you can do to take control over your own working conditions - and a big part of that involves identifying the people around you who are allies and collaborators. It requires figuring out how your workplace operates, how to be a good citizen in relation to your co-workers. It requires knowing the law, and knowing how and when to use it.

It it requires being very suspicious of anyone who presents themselves as a one-person solution: in my humble experience, the more that person talks about what they are going to do to make things better, the more certain it is that this person is going to make things worse.

I don't mean to defend the WPS against Borislow, exactly. Nothing about the news stories that have been coming out suggest that Borislow has been good for the league. But it was the league's administration that brought Borislow into its fold.

Anyway, who knows what lies ahead for the WPS.

I do know, however, that I don't want to watch professional matches and wonder what kind of insane crap players had to endure from their management in order to take the field. That's what the World Cup and the Olympics are for.

Tell Us Why: Notes from the UC Front

An Open Letter to UC Riverside Chancellor Timothy White

On Thursday, January 19 I spent a good part of the afternoon as a member of the crowd protesting outside the UC Regents meeting. I stood with students I'd taught, students I knew from their work with campus organizations, and students I've seen at other demonstrations. I stood with faculty, staff, Occupy activists from the region, and students from other campuses.

I stood right behind a barricade formed from placards painted after the cover of books used in our classrooms. This book-barricade was both a visual intervention (asserting knowledge as our choice of defense) and something that helped us to maintain our shape as a crowd.

In the two hours I was behind that barricade, we didn't move forward or back. We just stood there, chanting, talking, expressing our anger. The crowd got bigger and louder, but its peaceful character didn't change. The crowd successfully used Occupy Movement practices to control itself. Nevertheless, toward the end of the Regent's meeting, a UCPD officer declared through a bullhorn that our gathering was "an unlawful assembly."

The crowd chanted, "Tell us why! Tell us why! Tell us why!" It was an honest request.

No one on the other side made even the slightest gesture to respond to our question. And no administrator made even the slightest gesture towards negotiating with us. To do so would have been to admit that the UC Regents were trapped inside the building. To do so would have been to admit that the University of California Regents had grossly underestimated UC Riverside when it chose the campus for its meeting.

Our campus is "docile" by some standards. We don't have Berkeley or UCLA's history of activism. A lot of our students commute, which means that our campus environment is less condensed, less volatile.

UC Riverside is an open campus - perhaps the most open in the University of California system. Parking is relatively cheap and easy. Our students are so diverse it's hard to imagine what person would think, "this campus doesn't represent me." If Berkeley and UCLA are often the sites of large protests it is partly because those campuses represent the system - participating in an action there has a unique symbolic function as those campuses are "flagship" campuses.

Our campus represents something else. Our campus is rich with transfers from the community college system, rich with returning students, veterans, parents, kids who are the first in their families to graduate from college. Dreamers.

In the University of California system, our campus has one of the most organic relationships with its region. This makes for good press, but it also means that of the UC campuses we are the most reliant on state funds. We are the most vulnerable, our life as a public university feels quite precarious.

On some level, the people planning this meeting banked on that precarity. They banked on the notion that our students are too busy working to pay their tuition (and/or their parents' mortgages) to get involved with a protest.

The people coordinating the Regents meeting seemed to have been surprised by the size of the crowd, and by its persistence. The UCPD and the administration's confusion struck a lot of us as dangerous.

When the UCPD declared our demonstration an "unlawful assembly" it implicitly announced its intention to use force to break up the crowd without seeking another way to address the situation: negotiation of an exit for the Regents. With a negotiated exit the Regents risked not violence, but the embarrassment of being shunned.

The only instruction given to us was to not advance. In two hours, there'd been no motion from the crowd indicating that we would do so. There was discussion about moving forward and also if we should back up, since many of us were crowded on stairs and if the UCPD advanced on us there, we'd likely be hurt. But we did neither. We held our ground. The barricade formed at the front helped us to do that.

Word got out that the Regents were trying to leave via the back of the building (protesters were also there, but in smaller numbers). The crowd at the front broke up as we tried to reform at the building's service entrance.

When we got to the back of the student center, those forming the book barricade tried to take their protective stance at the front of the crowd. Someone took one of the metal barricades and pulled them towards the protesters, as we'd been doing all afternoon at various points around the building. No one had previously interfered with this.

The UCPD found their chance, though - as the crowd regrouped at the back of the Hub, they used force to prevent the formation of another blockade. Later, they would describe the attempt to form a barricade as violent. When the protesters went to move barricades (again, as they'd been doing all day with no interference), it was not an act of violence. There was nothing threatening about it - the threat was that the activists were going to successfully block the street. At this point, people were shoved to the ground, dragged across the pavement and plastic pellets were shot at the crowd. I saw wounds left by these pellets on students I've seen in my own classrooms. There is ample video out there showing this.

The UCPD threw people to the ground, the UCPD shot their new pellet guns into the crowd, the UCPD used force on us. BY this point, I should add, people had been protesting for hours - at any point the UCPD or the campus administration might have sought another path by engaging the protesters in dialogue. Honestly, I think that the people running security at the Regents meeting got romanced by the thrill of a military-style escape plan. 

The next day: UC administrators organized an Orwellian campaign to represent the violence of that incident as caused not by the UCPD but by the protesters. Even more bizarre was the eagerness for the administration to blame not students, but the public - as if the two should be distinguished from each other. In weekly letter to the campus community the Chancellor White claimed that "the disturbance of a few individuals" ruined the demonstration, and that they did not represent the "non-violent students and community members engaged in peaceful protest and exercising their right to free speech." But the people beaten and shot at by the UCPD are our students; they are our colleagues. And they are our neighbors. We were all in it together. They are the public, and the public is us.

Tell us why, Chancellor White. Why you stopped seeing yourself in us.

Illegal Use of Hypnosis in Wrestling

Just because.