- Thomas Patton asks the board to let Occupy Seattle remain on Seattle Central Community College campus; to his left is student body executive Zack Robertson, who says the camp makes the college unsafe.
Posted at 1:30 p.m. and moved up with details from the meeting.
After a hearing blitz of testimony about the growing safety threat posed by an Occupy Seattle encampment on school grounds, all five members of the Seattle Community College District’s board of trustees decided to file an emergency rule in Olympia today that would explicitly ban camping on all community college campuses. Chancellor Jill Wakefield says that assistant attorney general Derek Edward will file the order (posted here) this afternoon with state officials. College officials will provide the campers at on the Seattle Central Community College with a 72-hour eviction notice early next week.
Wakefiled told the board: “Eliminating camping is about public safety, not First Amendment rights.”
“I have been harassed four times trying to walk through campus,” a student named Julie told the board. She echoed the primary angle of critics—from several students to school staffers—about the growing dangers of an encampment linked to an alleged attempted sexual assault last Friday, evidence of drug use, unsanitary food preparation, and public defecation. Julie said she complained to school officials but felt she was “held hostage because we don’t have the legal right to evict them.” Even student council executive Zack Robertson—after pointing out that he wears a “We are the 99 Percent” sticker every day—said, “We don’t feel it is safe to have occupy Seattle on our campus anymore.”
But Thomas Patton, who has been camping with the Occupies on SCCC’s south lawn, testified, “To dismiss us for a handful of flaws we can commit to managing would be a mistake.” He immediately was followed by a man (whose name I didn’t catch) saying, “People are not going to back down without a fight. So please work with us to resolve these issues.”
SCCC president Dr Killpatrick countered that camp has “not been up to code, and it is very doubtful that they will get up to code.” While he commended Occupy Wall Street’s goals of economic reform, he closed by saying, “Camping on a college campus is not the way to do it. The attempted sexual assault was the last straw for me.”
In explaining his vote to amend part of the Washington Administrative Code that applies to Seattle Community Colleges to ban campers, board member Albert Shen said that “students were adamant about the administration taking action.”
But how to remove them? Pepper spray?
“I am going to do everything I can to ensure a peaceful process,” Wakefield said after the meeting.” That said, if the occupiers don’t leave on their own, she continued, “I will work with the state patrol and the Seattle Police Department.”
Karen Strickland, president of AFT Seattle Community Colleges, Local 1789 (the teachers’ union), called the recent use of pepper spray of protesters from UC Davis “horrific,” adding, “I don’t think there is any place for the use of force [to remove the occupiers in Seattle]. There are ways we can avoid it if we come together and figure it out.”
One source familiar with the Occupy Seattle legal team says lawyers are planning some form of legal action to stop the anti-camping order from taking effect.
UPDATE: SCCC spokeswoman Patricia Paquette says that while the 72-hour notice is a minimum requirement to comply with the emergency rule, “it does not imply immediate eviction.”
Chancellor Wakefield seems to be trying to put SCCC on the map with UC Davis.
Dominic,
I am not surprised. They simply can’t stay there indefinitely.
They banned storage of personal items and forbade protected speech.
Umm…
This is ridiculous, the campus has been under-maintained for years and NOW it’s a problem? Please.
@3 I would check your logic there. With that thinking, why ever fix anything once its fucked up? Seems like a great time to me. It is a community college and not a fucking campground. It makes no sense for them to be camped there in the first place. Head on down to Olympia and camp on the Capitol grounds for fuck sake. That would make more sense than tying up a tax-payer funded institution like a college, or are community colleges also on the chopping block for Occupy. You people are dumb.
edit: That would make more sense than tying up a tax-payer funded institution like a college, or are community colleges also on the chopping block for Occupy?
@3
What protected form of speech was banned?
Maybe update “Permanent” to “Department”?
I know politicians, bureaucrats and PR people are loath to make any concrete statements about anything, ever, but is it that hard to say “I do not want UC Davis-style use of pepper spray”?
Good thing there’s only ten days of school left, cause the wafting of pepper spray throughout the building is going to be a major problem.
@9
So sad that you’ve got that giant boner for another pepper spray incident.
It’s almost as if you don’t believe the message of the protests is strong enough to get through without the perverse ratification of police brutality.
@4 There is talk of going to Olympia.
At the very least for this:
“Occupy Olympia, Stop Cuts, Make the 1% Pay!”
https://www.facebook.com/events/14236602…
Rather than calling people dumb, why not go down and throw your ideas in the mix (assuming you actually think things would be better/beneficial for people to go to Olympia). Or, perhaps, join folks in Olympia on Monday.
I personally hope that the SCCC camp walks away saying “thank you” to the college. I also know, if that happens, I will be there to help clean up.
I’m absolutely in support of OWS and Occupy Seattle, but I think this is not only SCCC’s right, but the right decision, too. Occupying a community college was never useful – indeed, it’s almost exactly the opposite of what we all want to accomplish. It’s hard to imagine anything that’s more philosophically opposite a Wall Street investment bank than a community college.
I mean, the whole deal with protests is that they’re masses of people. Use modern technology and tactics. Send people home at night – or to shelters, since I know there are a lot of homeless in Occupy – and have them occupy someplace useful like business plazas or places of government when they convene. Don’t squat on SCCC and make things harder for the very people you’re trying to stand for.
@10 hey, if even the DOJ is complaining about overuse of force by the SPD and they set up the multi-city task force to crack down on Occupy nationwide, then …
Where there’s smoke grenades, there’s fire (in the eyes).
WOOT!! Time to crack some skulls! Throw the bums out!
I’m really confused on the continued claims about the filth of Seattle Central’s Campus. I’ve been a student there, gone to events there, and walked by almost every day in the middle of the night for a good six months and I don’t know how anyone can even pretend like dirty needles or human waste were daily occurrences there. Did I just walk around with rose colored glasses? It’s not pretty, but it’s a community college in the middle of a city — What do you expect?
@10
I have no beef with your (or anyone else’s) criticism of past incidents of police violence. What disturbs me is the relish with which you (and others) seem to anticipate future violence.
Can’t help but wonder, if Occupy is incapable of negotiating its relations with camping landlords and hapless police officers, why are we expected to believe it will someday magically turn into an awesome organizing force capable of achieving the economic reforms around which it originally coalesced?
In Los Angeles, the city has offered Occupy office and gardening space if they’ll just please get off City Hall’s lawn.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-…
And it’s looking as though nobody would have heard of Occupy UC Davis if the campus police hadn’t defied the chancellor’s orders to leave the students alone if they wouldn’t give up their tents peacefully:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/20…
I like how they are asking the SCCC to work with them to resolve these issues, when it was assured that these problems wouldnt even occur in the first place.
Hey Dominic, the guy who went after Thomas Patton was Liam Wright
Release the dogs! And I don’t mean Miss Jennifer ‘boil-lip’ Fox.
Just go read OS’s very own GA notes to see how the camp has become a Lord of the Flies zoo with drugs and booze added.
Jesus – this is really not rocket science. The government is entitled to put reasonable time, place and manner regulations on speech, provided that the regulations are content-neutral. There is a seminal case – Clark v. Community for Creative Nonviolence – that is incredibly instructive:
““Assuming that overnight sleeping in connection with the demonstration is expressive conduct protected to some extent by the First Amendment, the regulation forbidding sleeping meets the requirements for a reasonable time, place, or manner restriction of expression, whether oral written or symbolized by conduct.” Justice White continued to explain that the regulation is also content neutral with regard to the message presented, and still leaves ample alternative methods of communicating the intended message.”
Camping at a community college indefinitely is not protected speech, and it is pretty difficult to imagine a bona fide legal argument to the contrary. It would just be a lot easier to say that if the protestors were prolifers or Tea Party nutjobs.
I am very quickly losing faith in the efficacy and promise of the Occupy Movement.
I can haz Batroom?
There’s no food preparation there. Food is prepared off-site and served at the occupation.
I wonder if alleged sexual assault in dormitories and Greek houses are typically “the last straw” before mass-evictions occur on the University of Washington campus.
@24- Nice one.
@24 – Dormitories and Greek houses are designed and intended to be places where people live, sleep and eat. The same cannot be said about parks or public courtyards, which are designed for public day use.
Occupy Seattle has no constitutionally protected right to camp for months on public places that are not designated or intended for extended protest. The government is entitled to enact regulations that restrict speech by time, place, and/or manner, so long as those regulations are not directed to the actual content of the speech – so long as Occupy Seattle isn’t treated better or worse than the Teaparty Nutjobs.
Incidentally, the city is opening itself up to incredible liability by allowing this kind of camping. They can and will be sued for any injuries sustained by the campers, which is why you are already starting to hear false, bullshit claims.
It irritates the shit out of me when our side shows as much ignorance of the law as the other side. I think it is because I genuinely believe we are better informed, but man, we just aren’t. Comparing camping on a community college to dorms and fraternities is just plain nonsensical.
Time to go Occupy the Olympic National Park.
#15, you must be walking around with rose colored glasses. I’m a full time student attending SCCC, and if you aren’t seeing the repugnant shit being left by these individuals then you’re just sadly ignoring it. Before the encampment, we were testing the already fragile nutrient depleted soil on the grassy knoll, and it would be interesting to test the soil after they’re evicted, and see what kind of damage they’ve done to it. As a student who’s commonly out testing soil on campus, needles are a common sight, along with trash and human fecal matter.