I was proud to occupy Mrak Hall for the #FireKatehi demonstration

Students took to Mrak Hall on March 11 to demand the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after she was appointed a board member of the Devry University at the end of February.

Katehi resigned from the position after eight days following pressure from a number of external and internal groups at UC Davis. Criticisms were voiced due to Katehi’s current salary of $424,360 – taking the board position would have boosted this by a further $70,000.

Further to this, Devry University is a for-profit firm that offers college degrees online, and is currently under state and federal investigation for deceptive advertising regarding job and income prospects for graduates.

I joined the awesome folk taking insisting she be held accountable and protested with them. This is my experience with the group on the first two days of protest.

It was a cold rainy day in Davis. Students, workers, and community members gathered at noon at the Memorial Union, the center of campus, by the flagpole. According to Facebook, 268 people were scheduled to show, though there were only 50-60 people in attendance.

We had a wide variety of people marching in solidarity, including undergraduates, grad students, and even faculty.

Our group was also diverse, with demonstrators from many different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Once everyone had gathered, we marched to Mrak hall, the administration building, and began a sit in at the Chancellor’s office on the 5th floor, hoping to catch Chancellor Katehi working there.

When we arrived at Chancellor Katehi’s office in Mrak hall, she was (unsurprisingly) not present. She was likely golfing (my assumption).

Instead she sent one of our underlings to talk to us, and give us a typical university spiel. Because of this result of the sit in, we decided to stay.

The University also bought pizzas for the protesters in an effort to calm us down.

We gratefully accepted the pizzas, but we were not going to be silenced.

During this time I interviewed five people about the protest and about Chancellor Katehi:

Madi Kuss, second year, Aerospace Engineering

“I’m an out of state student, I’m already paying double what in-state students pay, and last year, the UC system decided to raise my tuition even more, which just seems really ridiculous to me considering what the Chancellor is making.

“Even if you just look at how much she’s making from her position as chancellor at UC Davis alone, it seems wrong to me that she wouldn’t take a pay cut when students are paying this much.

“If she has the time to be on multiple boards that aren’t through UC Davis and take on multiple jobs, it doesn’t seem like her job warrants the amount of money she’s making.”

Elly Oltersdorf, third year, History

“We believe that what is best for the student of this school is for Katehi to step down from her position, and we think that she should have done that in 2011, after the Pepper Spray Incident, but we would concede to her stepping down today. I would say that the instances of moonlighting are representative of what her interests are.

“Her interests aren’t with students, her interests aren’t with education, her interests are with profit. And she made it clear that she stands for herself and she stands for herself and she stands with her own profits, and as far as the school is concern she does not seem to be a good fit.”

Evan W. Sandlin, graduate teaching assistant, Political Science

“We have all sorts of grievances with the administration, that have gone on for quite a bit. Obviously, one of them is the police brutality, stemming from the 2011 protest, but you still see militarized, weaponized police on campus and that’s of course been a concern with minority communities, especially the black community, which has been more subjected to this violence.

“You see people upset with the way the Administration has handled and mishandled sexual assault cases, and of course Katehi is not only a symbol of all of these things, but a symbol of both the worst excesses of the university, and the neoliberalization of the university, which is supposed to be supporting the students but at the same time leeching off of them.”

Patricia Bohls, first year PhD student, Entomology

“Katehi needs to be fired. She has several clear conflicts of interest, and she clearly has herself at the center of her heart rather than the students. We need someone who is going to be our Chancellor who cares about the student body, not her. She only cares about herself.

“The school is being run like a business, and they want people at the top to help them stay at the top, and they are not for the students. I think it is absolutely disgusting the amount of money she makes; there are many graduate students here who have contact with the [undergraduate] students here. We are the ones actually educating them, and we make somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 dollars each year, depending on what department we are in, and really she should be making much more on par with us. On par with the professors, and the graduate students who are teaching.

“I don’t think administrators should be paid any more than the professors. What makes up the university are the TAs who are teaching and the professors who are teaching.”

One graduate student, who preferred to remain anonymous, said: “Katehi has done a number of things which have not been addressed by the faculty and the Regents of this university, and we would like Katehi to answer those things or resign from her position.

“I feel that responding to the Pepper Spray Incident from 2011 is a huge issue, as well as to the amount of money she’s been paid in the last year.

“She should be paid a more average salary, she’s been given a place to live [The University Mansion] and she should not be paid as much as she is in order to maintain that lifestyle.”

Fake resignation letters were handed out as well, highlighting Katehi’s controversial side work with DeVry, a for-profit college, Wiley and Sons, a textbook company, and King Abdulaziz University, a Saudi college accused of bribing university ranking boards. Extras of these letters were later used to decorate the room.

Eventually, the sit in became stagnant as it became clear Chancellor Katehi would not be showing up.

The sit in turned into a sleepover during which we decided to a little more decorating during our occupation of Mrak hall.

Several awesome supporters brought us food, and a number of different media outlets, such as the Sacramento Bee, Davis Enterprise, Fox 40, CBS 13, and ABC 10 came to talk to us.

We saw there was a critical lack of gender-neutral restrooms on the fifth floor so we took it upon ourselves to create some.

We also introduced a policy to use gender-neutral language (i.e. “you all” instead of “you guys”) and to ask everyone their pronouns (i.e. they/them, she/her, he/him), both within our group and with the media outlets as well.

We even built a blanket fort!

We stayed up until about 1 A.M. Since it is the weekend of finals week, some folks took the opportunity to study. Sleeping on the floor of Mrak Hall wasn’t exactly the best sleep I’ve had to say the least.

The next morning, we continued to stay in Mrak Hall. UC Davis Police officers were present in and around the building, but they avoided the fifth floor, letting us continue our stay.

Overall, I had a very good experience with my first time in student activism. We had some good conversations, I made connections with other activists, and I was glad to get my voice out there and be able to speak out against corruption and hypocrisy in our administration.

The occupation of Mrak Hall was still ongoing, and I know the protest will continue until Katehi is gone.