In 2011 this instantly viral photo showed a group of college students sitting passively on the ground while a UC Davis police employee slowly and deliberately doused them with pepper spray.
The event drew widespread criticism of the school, dragging it into the Occupy Wall Street debate that was making waves around the country.
University documents show that the school paid public relations firms at least $175,000 to hide bad publicity on Google when people searched on the university name and the name of its chancellor, Linda Katehi, according to The Sacramento Bee, which obtained the papers.
In a statement, Dana Topousis, interim strategic communications lead at UC Davis, defended the university’s use of communications funds. “Increased investment in social media and communications strategy has heightened the profile of the university to good effect,” Topousis said. She added that it’s important that good news from the school “is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011.”
Government, and government funded programs, and its employees need to be fully open and transparent for everyone to see and hold the people taking tax money accountable for their crimes. Spending public institution money to cover this up should itself be a criminal act in conspiracy (two or more people acting together) with the this evil rent-a-cop’s evil.
Make sure you keep a copy of the photo and share this around forever because they keep trying to delete it along with references to the school chancellor’s latest corruption scandal. “…for her acceptance of seats on private corporate boards, including a textbook publisher and a for-profit university that was under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission.” And uses tuition fees and public money to cover up her crimes. True evil that has no place in a modern society.
Anyway, back to Barbra Streisand.