Chancellor Katehi’s art project

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has a blog. It’s called Common Sense. The last entry, dated October 26, is about something called “The Civility Project.”

On the blog, Katehi describes the Civility Project as an effort, “to use history and art … in an examination of how incivility has been and continues to be manifested on campus and to explore alternative engagements in the future.”

Funny, just a couple weeks later Chancellor Katehi’s decisions would lead to some serious incivility on her own campus.

And funny how a UC Davis senior named Louise Macabitas captured that incivility with her camera—and it quickly turned into an iconic image of blatant abuse of power.

The first remix I saw was from my friend Davis artist Kyle Monhollen (right). Then there was pepper-spraying cop vs. Seurat’s Sunday afternooners, and of course pepper-spraying cop vs. the U.S. Constitution.

Over the weekend, the meme of the pepper-spraying cop bloomed. In fact, there’s a whole blog full of these at http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com. Repost widely.

Anyway, Katehi also writes on her blog that, “We are a campus known for its civility and our commitment to respect, equality and freedom of expression runs deep.”

So, there’s that.

Compiled from Snog.