I'm a professor here at UC Davis.
About 3 weeks ago, students on our campus were holding an Occupy protest. They were behaving peacefully and the situation seemed quite stable. After only 1 day of this protest, the leadership of UC Davis made the terrible mistake of calling in the police to try to get the students to leave.

As most of the world knows, the police attacked the students as they sat peacefully, posing no threat to anyone. The police used high grade pepper spray on the students, often spraying it right into eyes, mouths, etc. About a dozen students were arrested. The unprovoked police attack and the fact that the Chancellor of our university, Linda Katehi, pulled the trigger so to speak on calling in the police, has created both an international but also a local firestore here in Davis. You can watch just one of many videos of the attack yourself here on YouTube. The action by police is extremely disturbing and appears unconstitutional. Pepper spray is not a food product as Fox News might have you believe, but is technically a chemical weapon that has caused fatalities.

I remain very proud of UC Davis and especially of our students, but clearly something went horribly wrong here. Perhaps not surprising, many investigations are underway to try to plumb what happened and who's to blame. Many UC Davis faculty have called for Katehi's resignation including the English and Physics Departments. Other faculty have come to her defense. It's a terrible situation.