Support Berkeley Anti-War Protesters

ear Friends,

Join Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Peter
Camejo and many others and add your name to the letter
below that will appear as a full-page advertisement in
the UC Berkeley "Daily Cal" newspaper on October 27.
This will be the day before the sentencing hearing for
three Berkeley students being disciplined for their
role in a peaceful anti-war sit-in. Please send your
name and affiliation to DefendBerkeley3@aol.com. If
you are able to make a contribution to the cost of
publishing this letter, please make out a check to
"BSTW" (that’s the Berkeley Stop the War coalition) and
put "Berkeley 3" in the memo line. Send it to: BSTW
c/o Snehal Shingavi, 322 Wheeler Hall, Berkeley, CA
94720. Lastly, please forward this letter to
professors, students, labor and social justice
activists and leaders, writers, artists, journalists
and everyone you know who cares about civil liberties
and ask them to sign on along with you.

In Solidarity, Todd Chretien Committee to Defend
Student Civil Liberties 510-333-4604

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Berkeley Student Anti-War Protesters Deserve Due
Process

On Tuesday, October 14, three University of California,
Berkeley students, Rachel Odes, Michael Smith and
Snehal Shingavi, were convicted in absentia of
"disturbing the peace" by a university disciplinary
panel for their role in a March 20, 2003 anti-war sit-
in. On that day, 4,000 Berkeley students responded to
the beginning of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq by
rallying on the historic Mario Savio steps of Sproul
Hall administration building. Over 400 students then
entered Sproul Hall and began a peaceful sit-in to
demand that the University of California take a stand
against the war by declaring Baghdad University a
sister school, refusing to comply with FBI requests for
information on foreign students and pledging to refrain
from raising tuition and laying off faculty and staff
because of budget cuts caused by military spending. UC
administrators refused to even discuss these demands
and ordered police to make arrests for "trespassing."

Since Sproul Hall is a public building, operated and
paid for by student tuition, and it was during business
hours, UC police declared the sit-in, which was
confined to the front lobby, an "unlawful assembly."
Eventually, 119 protesters were arrested.

In the Alameda County District Attorney’s judgment, the
students’ actions did not warrant prosecution and all
legal charges were quickly dropped. The UC Berkeley
administration, however, decided to press ahead with
its own disciplinary charges, which could include
penalties ranging from community service to a ban on
participating in future protests to suspension from
school.

If the conviction against these three prominent
activists in the Berkeley Stop the War coalition
stands, it will chill free speech at UC Berkeley.

Compounding matters, the UC Berkeley administration has
made a mockery of due process rights. It has stacked
the deck by assigning full-time administrators to
prosecute the students, while assigning only two unpaid
and inexperienced student advocates to the defense.

The administration has repeatedly violated its own
written procedures. For instance, two of the defendants
received certified letters notifying them of the
hearing on October 3, just seven business days prior to
the hearing. The third student, Rachel Odes, never
even received a letter. University policy clearly
states that defendants must be notified at least 10
days in advance of the hearing. When this fact was
brought to his attention, disciplinary hearing
committee chair physics professor Robert Jacobsen told
Odes that "since her friends told her about it, she
only lost a day or two."

This disregard for university rules adversely affects
the students’ ability to prepare a defense because the
administration also asserts that any witnesses or
evidence to be used in the hearing must be submitted at
least 5 days in advance. Thus, the students had, at
most, 48 hours to contact witnesses, gather statements,
retain legal counsel and generally prepare themselves
for the hearing. The defendants brought these
procedural violations to the attention of the five man
hearing board and requested a one-month delay.
Jacobsen dismissed these concerns out of hand and
admonished the students not to pursue a "scorched
earth" defense. When supporters in the audience at the
hearing gasped, the hearing board chair declared that
he would "move the hearing to the men’s room" if there
were any interference from the public. After realizing
that one of the defendants was a woman, he
embarrassingly added, "or the women’s room."

As the defendants attempted to plead their case, the
Jacobsen interrupted them, held up his finger like an
umpire and said, "that’s one!" When the defendants
continued, he continued, "that two!" Before they could
be called out on three strikes, Michael Smith spoke up
saying, "Our academic careers on are the line. More
importantly, this is about the right of students to
dissent on this campus and to receive due process when
the university comes after us. We are not going to sit
here and be part of this joke of a hearing." The three
defendants then led their supporters out of the hearing
room.

We believe that Berkeley is violating these students’
right to due process.

We do not understand why a reasonable delay in the
hearing could not be granted.

We protest the decision to convict them in absentia.

We call on UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl and
Dean of Students Karen Kenney to step into this process
and cancel the October 28 sentencing hearing.

We demand that a new hearing date be set, on a date
mutually agreeable to both parties that respects the
students’ right to organize an adequate defense.

The Bush Administration has carried out an
unprecedented attack on civil liberties in this country
over the last two years. The UC Berkeley
administration has a special duty to ensure that its
academic community stands as a beacon of light for
hard-won legal protections for which so many
generations have fought. The university should be
encouraging discourse and tolerating dissent as part of
a diversified educational experience, benefiting the
student body and the community as a whole. Instead,
it is cutting corners and steamrollering students’
rights in its rush to punish opposition to war. It is
time for the UC Berkeley administration to come to its
senses and grant a new hearing for Odes, Smith and
Shingavi.

Signed,

Peter Camejo Green Party candidate for governor

Noam Chomsky Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Howard Zinn Professor Emeritus Boston University Author
of A People’s History of the United States

Anthony Arnove Editor, Iraq Under Siege South End Press

Katrina Yeaw Western Regional Representative Campus
Anti-War Network

Eyad Kishawi Free Palestine Alliance

Initiated by the Committee to Defend Student Civil
Liberties Affiliations listed for identification
purposes only