This video is from spring 2007 at Humboldt State University after a protest was being organized against closed door meetings where decisions were being made without student representation. This is despite HSU President Rollin Richmond's assurances of shared governance on campus. A recent sit-in by indigenous students led to a closed door policy at Richmond's office. The plan was to get a foot in the door and do the same after one student gets a secretary to answer. Plain clothes campus police repelled the action but I persisted to protest in another way when we were told to go away and spied on. This video shows some of this and my confrontation to Richmond's secretary who is in complete denial.
A group of a dozen-plus student activists from an unofficial activist group called CAUSE (Community Action United to Save Education) gathered to execute the plan but it fell apart quickly. A bomb threat was rumored to have been made, HSU's University Police Department officers were in Siemens Hall armed but in plainclothes. Siemens Hall contains Richmond's and other administrative offices. There was to be a larger protest , but most participants were wary of conducting a sit-in during elevated security so I resorted to holding a sign and standing outside Richmond's conference room. A few others joined me, most left.
I made a banner saying "Listen, stop dismissin!" that was mounted on some scrap wood I happened to find. UPD officer Rodney Dickerson was in the window when I arrived there. He knew my name though I never met him. Dickerson tried told me to go home. I took my sign and faced it away from the building as HSU tours brought prospective students by. Some traffic would stop and talk to us about issues students have with the administration.
Later on I thought I noticed somebody across the library courtyard there but didn't have my glasses on. Another student noticed this. Kintay Johnson, a candidate for president in the upcoming 2007 Associated Students election. It turned out one UPD officer, Melissa Hansen, was under the Theatre Arts loading dock with a camcorder sitting in the shadows recording us. She was unresponsive when we approached her.
Soon after John T. Carter (of Nerdapolooza fame) and John Osborne (now writer of The Bay Reporta), student reporters from HSU's the Lumberjack appeared and tried, to no avail, to communicate with Hansen. There was unfortunately no article in the next issue of the paper but a small mention with a picture of Hansen filming us. She left shortly after communicating on a cell phone with her superiors after her cover was blown.
I immediately went upstairs and knocked on the President's office door, which was locked with a sign saying, "please knock," hanging from inside the glass. One of his minions answered the door after a few minutes and muttered some incoherent excuse about water. She acted completely ignorant to the whole situation despite being in the office attached to the conference room where I was confronted by Officer Dickerson from the window.
She also was unable to define Carnegie Comprehensive, a measure used in our "higher education" system and the term was being used frequently at meetings I attended for various committees as a representative for HSU's Associated Students. The monolithic fortunes of Andrew Carnegie were preemptively invested in tax-exempt foundations as taxes were passed originally only on the rich only to manifest into today's modern day share-cropping via IRS agents.
There are good resources on the nefarious origins of "philanthropy" as we know it. Look up an interview with Norman Dodd, Director of Research for the Congressional Reece Committee in 1953, which investigate tax-exempt foundations and uncovered their hidden agenda. Also elite insider Carroll Quigley's "Tragedy & Hope" or "The Anglo-American Establishment" are excellent books on the origins of the basis for non-profit sectors of society.
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HSU Campus Safety Video 2008by BrianTyzzer345 views
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