Does anyone care about Katehi anymore?

We asked students if they still have strong opinions about the UCD Chancellor and the allegations against her

After months of outrage surrounding the numerous allegations against the UC Davis Chancellor, from her misuse of funds, to accusations of nepotism, wrongful involvement on boards outside of the UC system, and her obscenely high salary, talk of Katehi’s various transgressions seems to have completely stopped.

For the past few months Katehi has been all the campus could talk about, protesters occupied her office in Mrak All for thirty six days, and social media was abuzz with #firekatehi.  Now, Katehi has been placed on administrative leave for 90 days, and her step out of the office has also seemed to coincide with her exit from the limelight.  We wondered, does anyone still care about the Katehi drama? Did anyone ever really care? Are people satisfied now that she is under investigation? 

Based on the replies of literally every person I asked, it seems the student body in general is over the Katehi drama, or never really cared to begin with. The answers to the question “Do you still care about Katehi?” ranged from no, to not really, to “I only care if she is the one that made Shah’s stop taking swipes.”

Among all of my housemates the answer is unanimous: no one cares anymore.

I asked my former lab partner, and dearest friend, if she still cares about Katehi and she does not; she also agrees that most of the student body does not care anymore.

Not only does he not care anymore, he had completely forgotten about all of it.

So it seems on average students seem to be over it, at least for now.  There have been some jokes still posted on UC Davis facebook pages, and memes making fun of the UC Davis chancellor continue to be posted, including a fake tinder profile for her. 

Yik yak, a social media platform where users can post anonymously was taken over by posts about Katehi during the time of the protests, there were numerous posts about the drama, both people complaining about the protestors and supporting them, sprinkled with puns and jokes about all of the katehi drama. For the sake of science and journalism I braved the horror that is yik yak in order to see if people were still posting about Katehi, and in fact, some actually were! The number of posts seems to have died down significantly since the peak of the protests, but what was interesting is that the posts still discussing Katehi seems to be supporting her and questioning whether or not having her under investigation is ethical.

This student brought up some interesting points in support of the chancellor.

This post by one user highlighted some good things Katehi has done, which sparked some more conversation about whether the protests and allegations against her got out of hand.  Did Katehi really deserve all of the hate she got? Was it all her fault? 

Some students support Katehi, most don’t care anymore, but what are the protesters who were most adamant about Katehi being fired up to now?  

The protesters seem to still care, they have kept the fire katehi facebook page alive and running, a page that garnered over 2,000 likes on facebook, and while for now they are less vociferous than they were during the height of the occupation, it seems they are still attempting to spread awareness about the problems with the administration; we will have to wait until after Katehi’s investigation and 90 day leave to see what else the protestors will have in store for us.  

 

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