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posted by cmn32480 on Friday April 15 2016, @10:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

The University of California in Davis has spent $175,000 to try to improve its online image:

The University of California in Davis has spent $175,000 on search engine optimization (SEO) and online reputation management – to hide an embarrassing incident in which students were pepper-sprayed on campus. The massive bill has come to light this week after the Sacramento Bee filed information requests on the university's expenditure after it noticed that its "strategic communications budget" has nearly doubled from $2.93 million in 2009 to $5.47 million in 2015.

The newspaper found that the university had taken out several contracts aimed at "cleaning up the negative attention" that the university received when students were pepper-sprayed in November 2011 during a protest over large tuition fee hikes and in support of the broader Occupy movement of that time. The incident received worldwide attention when video was published of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike nonchalantly spraying a group of students with the chemical spray while they sat on the ground holding a peaceful rally.

[...] In an effort to limit the university's connection with the pepper-spraying, UC Davis hired Maryland-based Nevins & Associates for $15,000 a month for six months to "create and execute an online branding campaign" not just for the University of Davis, but also its chancellor Linda Katehi, who was widely criticized for her handling of the protests and faced calls for her resignation.

Here's the website of The University of California in Davis. Did I mention the University of California in Davis?


Original Submission

Related Stories

UC Davis Chancellor Suspended After $175,000 Online Name-Scrubbing Antics 40 comments

El Reg reports

Linda Katehi, the chancellor of the University of California, Davis, has been suspended pending an investigation into the decision to spent hundreds of thousand of dollars improving Google search results for her name, amid a range of other questionable activities.

The decision to put Katehi on paid administrative leave was made by UC President Janet Napolitano, who wrote a two-page letter(PDF) to Katehi noting she would be suspended for 90 days pending the outcome of a "rigorous and transparent investigation."

The revelation that Katehi's office had spent $175,000 in an effort to "achieve a reasonable balance of positive natural search results on common terms concerning UC Davis and Chancellor Katehi" was dug out by the Sacramento Bee looking into why UC Davis' "strategic communications budget" had jumped from $2.93M in 2009 to $5.47M in 2015.

The events Katehi was seeking to whitewash--when security officers pepper-sprayed sitting students back in 2011--received nationwide press attention for the seemingly callous way in which the undergraduates were treated. The news that the university had secretly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to remove that reputational stain was similarly covered.

[...] Napolitano's letter also puts a spotlight on other concerns over Katehi's behavior, including the employment of her son, her husband, and her daughter-in-law by the university.

[...] The letter [also] refers to complaints that student fees have been used for "unapproved instructional purposes" which would be "a serious violation of University policy".

[...] UC Davis students have been holding rallies calling for Katehi's resignation for over a week.

Previous: University of California in Davis Spent $175k on SEO and "Reputation Management"


Original Submission

Former UC Davis Chancellor Much More Obsessed With Her Online Reputation than Initially Thought 28 comments

TechDirt reports

Earlier this year, we discussed how UC Davis detailed in a report that it spent $175k with a reputation management firm to try bury the 2011 pepper-spraying incident that has become so infamous, as well as to bolster the positive reputation and search results of its former Chancellor, Linda Katehi.

[...] A new report has been issued that makes it clear that the $175k with the one reputation management vendor was just the tip of the iceberg, and that Katehi's obsession with her own online reputation was far more serious than anyone had known. Indeed, her attempts to meddle in her own online search results started long before the 2011 pepper-spraying incident.

[...] While the initial reporting indicated a single vendor had been paid $175k on Katehi's request to try to control messaging about the school and herself through a barrage of good, but trumped up, press, UC Davis actually hired three different reputation management firms to do this, all to the tune of over $400k. And she appears to have been more concerned with her own reputation than that of the school she was to be stewarding.

[...] It goes without saying that as we, the link above, and several other online media outlets are discussing these revelations, and placing them alongside the original 2011 incident for context, the work of the three vendors and the nearly half a million dollars paid to them has failed.

Previous: UC Davis Chancellor Suspended After $175,000 Online Name-Scrubbing Antics
University of California in Davis Spent $175k on SEO and "Reputation Management"


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 15 2016, @10:34AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday April 15 2016, @10:34AM (#332157) Journal

    Hey! Are you a company, institution, political organisation or public figure with a problem? Have you done something naughty? Told some fibs? Broken the law maybe? Released shitty, dangerous or offensive products? Abused your power or violated the trust placed in you? I'll be you don't want to go to the trouble and expense of correcting your bad practise or making amends with the people you wronged, and why should you?

    Welcome to the 21st Century, where every problem is just an image problem!

    Simply pay to spin the magic wheel of public relations and re-name, re-badge, re-brand those worries away. The public are stupid and amnesiac enough to forgive or forget any transgression; all you need is a better logo, some slick advertising and the right celebrity endorsements.

    Seriously, sometimes: Fuck this world.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:41AM (#332160)

      "Seriously, sometimes: Fuck this world."

      fuck yeah fuck this fucking shit fucked planet.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday April 15 2016, @10:39AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Friday April 15 2016, @10:39AM (#332158) Homepage Journal

    I like the take that Popehat has on the UC Davis affair [popehat.com].

    His conclusion: "Do you wonder why college costs escalate? One reason, certainly, is that there is no consequence for administrative idiocy or incompetence."

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday April 15 2016, @11:23AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 15 2016, @11:23AM (#332170) Journal

      I like the take that Popehat has on the UC Davis affair [popehat.com].

      His conclusion: "Do you wonder why college costs escalate? One reason, certainly, is that there is no consequence for administrative idiocy or incompetence."

      I think you forgot to mentioned the University of California in Davis.
      If you didn't mention the University of California in Davis, the link above will have a decreased chance to be associated with the University of California in Davis. [popehat.com]
      You should do more to link this to the University of California in Davis [popehat.com].
      Because it is important for the link to say something in relation with the University of California in Davis [popehat.com].

      Why is it this important?
      The Streisand effect, as pointed by the linked article on UC Davis [popehat.com]:

      So I doubt that Nevins & Associates or "IDMLOCO" advised their client that the natural and probable consequence of spending $175,000 on this was that sooner or later it would become public and a nearly-forgotten incident would blow up and it would dominate UC Davis search results and make them look sordid and ridiculous. Maybe they have a strategy to deal with it, for another fee.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @02:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @02:20PM (#332225)

        I'm intrigued by the content about the University of California in Davis [popehat.com]. For anyone wondering what the actual url of the article [popehat.com] is, the url is https://popehat.com/2016/04/14/uc-davis-wondered-if-175000-would-make-the-internet-go-away-conclusion-no [popehat.com].

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Leebert on Friday April 15 2016, @03:09PM

        by Leebert (3511) on Friday April 15 2016, @03:09PM (#332239)

        Nice idea, but it's thwarted by the rel="nofollow" that most online forums, including SoylentNews, applies to links in user comments to reduce the incentive for blog spamming.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 15 2016, @04:42PM

          by frojack (1554) on Friday April 15 2016, @04:42PM (#332284) Journal

          How does that actually work?
          Because not all URLs in comments get the nofollow treatment. Is there some master list of blogs that get the nofollow tag?

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 15 2016, @09:45PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 15 2016, @09:45PM (#332445) Journal

          Nice idea, but it's thwarted by the rel="nofollow" that most online forums, including SoylentNews, applies to links in user comments to reduce the incentive for blog spamming.

          At least Firefox and Chromium has this great functionality that allows one to "Inspect element".
          It's what I've done with the links in my comment and surprise:... no "rel=nofollow". Is the attr generated only for crawlers?

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Friday April 15 2016, @09:57PM

            by Leebert (3511) on Friday April 15 2016, @09:57PM (#332450)

            Hmm, interesting point made by you and frojack. Some links seem to have them, some don't. This isn't my area of expertise, but I have a vague recollection that some platforms only put it in for high-risk users (e.g., anonymous coward) or exclude it for low-risk users (e.g., maxed out karma).

            So I'll retract my prior statement because it doesn't seem to be applicable to that particular comment, anyway.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday April 15 2016, @11:51AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 15 2016, @11:51AM (#332178) Journal
      From the independent report which Popehat cited:

      As detailed below, the Task Force concludes that the failure to conduct any additional investigation into the presence of non-affiliates in the encampment was a significant error in the Leadership Team’s decision-making process.

      UC Davis campus administrators identified the security risks created by non-affiliates participating in the Occupy encampment as a critical factor influencing their decision to remove the tents erected in the Occupy UC Davis encampment. One source for their concern was the information reported by news media regarding drug use and violence at municipal encampments, particularly the Occupy Oakland encampment, and the presence of non-affiliates at protests and encampments at other universities, such as UC Berkeley.

      As a shining example of the competence involved, they were basing important decisions on media news from places that had nothing to do with UC Davis. But at least the news would never lie to us, right?

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday April 15 2016, @12:02PM

        by fritsd (4586) on Friday April 15 2016, @12:02PM (#332183) Journal

        It is beyond belief if it is true that the university top brass didn't take a stroll to that tent camp during lunch break, and have a chat with the occupiers to figure out what was all going on on their campus. Did they shy away from meeting students as well, in case they were loud and/or smelly or weird? If you can't deal with students and their ilk, you have no business being in a university.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 15 2016, @12:48PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 15 2016, @12:48PM (#332199) Journal
          Someone might have brought a friend of theirs onto campus, creating a dangerous situation.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @12:48PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @12:48PM (#332200)

          > If you can't deal with students and their ilk, you have no business being in a university.

          If you think that's bad, check out Ohio State University. They claimed that administrators would not feel safe having to walk past protesting students in a building lobby so the students were therefore in violation of the student code of conduct and would be arrested if they didn't clear out. [theatlantic.com] It's yet another case in the age-old tradition of the powerful co-opting a concept created to protect the weak and using it to protect the powerful instead. Power always finds a way.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 15 2016, @08:02PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Friday April 15 2016, @08:02PM (#332395)

          Presumably because if the head honchos actually went and talked to them, that would give the appearance of legitimizing whatever they were complaining about.

          Much better to nuke them from orbit, er I mean send in the attack dogs and tear gas.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @04:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @04:36PM (#332283)

      Also: They are a business. Nothing more, and nothing less! People keep romanticizing university, but in the end they're just businesses. So, when you ask why they are raising tuition...because they a business, and their goal is to make money plain and simple, and they have a monopoly. What's your alternative? Online universities?

      The bookstore at the university where I live jacked up the prices of all the text books, and then had the audacity to have all these little signs with a pie chart on them breaking down all the expenses explaining why the price hike. All their irrelevant information on them boiled down to them wanting more money. Oh, so they're a business.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 15 2016, @10:27PM

        by butthurt (6141) on Friday April 15 2016, @10:27PM (#332463) Journal

        The University of California, Davis [wikipedia.org] is part of a system paid for, in part, by the state government of California.

        The express purpose of the state's educational efforts is written in its constitution:

        A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being
        essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the
        people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the
        promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural
        improvement.

        -- http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_9 [ca.gov]

        If the state-run universities are mainly pursuing profit, they may not be fulfilling their ostensible purpose. It's conceivable that the public could eventually become reluctant to continue paying for the system.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:52AM (#332163)

    Why would a university have its own police.

    The entire system is fucked beyond belief.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:06AM (#332166)

      Why does a township have its own police? Why do the military have their own police? Why does any public institution have their own police? It is completely incomprehensible to me as well, why a public institution with a population bigger than most small towns, complete with issues entirely unique to its circumstances regarding public safety, would have its own police force.

      The world is a huge tantalizing mystery to me as well.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday April 15 2016, @11:39AM

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Friday April 15 2016, @11:39AM (#332173) Journal

        Well, it seems to be a uniquely American thing. All the universities I've studied at or visited around Europe seem to get along just fine without their own police forces. A few of them might have "campus security" but I think that's the exception rather than the norm. I think the Americans just like having lots and lots of different police & security forces.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @12:26PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @12:26PM (#332190)

          Clearly you don't understand the purpose of (private) campus police forces. They exist to suppress crime reporting and statistics that would be damaging to the school. If you let the regular police investigate all the crime that occurs on campus - especially the rapes - then the school would have some 'splainin to do. With your own police force you can intimidate victims to prevent them from "causing trouble" - especially for top school athletes.

          Private police forces are for protection - the protection of the school's reputation and government subsidies.

          • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 15 2016, @01:51PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday April 15 2016, @01:51PM (#332213) Journal

            I don't know about the top athlete part, because my alma mater's football team could have been lapped by a reasonably strong junior high school team, but the Campus Police definitely did suppress crime reports of rapes all the time. The university was an island surrounded by some of the highest crime areas on Chicago's south side, so of course there were constant thefts, assaults, and other crimes happening all the time, but thanks to the blanket of silence imposed by the administration and campus cops, the outside world thought it was a safe place to study.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday April 15 2016, @04:52PM

              by bob_super (1357) on Friday April 15 2016, @04:52PM (#332289)

              Did IIT even have a football team?

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday April 15 2016, @12:36PM

          by bradley13 (3053) on Friday April 15 2016, @12:36PM (#332196) Homepage Journal

          You're right. I teach at a university in Switzerland with 10k+ students. We have no security department at all.

          On the other hand, we (and many European universities) have no "campus" in the American sense. Our buildings are generally integrated into the town or city around them.

          We also have a lot less of the "victim" mentality. Our students are here to study, not to protest microaggressions. While many individual students are politically aware, they haven't created this weird bubble that seems (from afar, anyway) to exist in American universities. If a student is active in politics, they are active in community politics, not in some movement within the university. We are part of the community, not isolated from it.

          --
          Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
          • (Score: 2) by rondon on Friday April 15 2016, @01:56PM

            by rondon (5167) on Friday April 15 2016, @01:56PM (#332214)

            American Universities (not all, but many I am familiar with) actively isolate themselves from the towns and cities around them. Fences, key-card locked doors to the library, and other methods serve to make the students insulated from the townsfolk around them.

            My freshman year of college, the only reason I left campus was to visit family and find parties. When I was on campus, I hardly ever saw someone who didn't work for attend classes at the university I went to.

            I think it may have something to do with separating the college kids from the poors so they feel safe, but I don't really know to be honest.

            • (Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday April 15 2016, @03:50PM

              by M. Baranczak (1673) on Friday April 15 2016, @03:50PM (#332255)
              When I went to college, the library was open to the public, but otherwise, it was a lot like you describe. I don't even think there was any rational thought that went into this, it was more like a pathological need to control. They wanted the school to have oversight over all aspects of the students' lives - isolating the school from the community was just a side effect. And it didn't help that most of the students were stuck-up rich assholes, who didn't want anything to do with the community beyond ordering pizza and wings.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:07PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:07PM (#332334)

                The university I went to the campus police were little more than security guards who handed out parking tickets.

                If you wanted something properly taken care of you did not call them. You called the local police.

                The university told us to call the campus police first. But the students running the orientation said this 'here is what I am supposed to tell you but you should do this instead'.

                You dont *have* to call them. In most jurisdictions the local police have the ultimate authority anyway.

        • (Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Friday April 15 2016, @06:47PM

          by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Friday April 15 2016, @06:47PM (#332361)

          Because the drinking age is 21, you need a police force that doesn't apply that particular rule. Or if they do, it turns into a problem with the school, not the legal system.

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday April 15 2016, @11:40AM

        by Gaaark (41) on Friday April 15 2016, @11:40AM (#332174) Journal

        Why do the police have police?
        http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/ontario-police-watchdog/ [huffingtonpost.ca]

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday April 15 2016, @11:22AM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Friday April 15 2016, @11:22AM (#332169)

      To protect their "safe spaces". Duh.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Friday April 15 2016, @12:13PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Friday April 15 2016, @12:13PM (#332186) Journal

      Why would a university have its own police.

      The entire system is fucked beyond belief.

      Ah, I know this one.

      It's so that if your winter coat gets stolen in the Biochemistry building, you can file a formal complaint after you walked through the freezing rain to the two-staffed university police shed and convinced them to reluctantly do the paperwork.

      Also, it's their function to arrest any students that used their night pass to explore the kilometers of corridors connecting the different labs to the nuclear bomb shelter underground(*). So I've heard. He couldn't convince the security guards that he had entered the Psychology building from a different lab a kilometer away, because they didn't believe that tunnel under the main road existed.

      (*) a previous director used it as his private wine cellar, so the top brass was NOT impressed with students lurking around the dungeons.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:47PM (#332212)

      So all the public drunkness and pot smoking and brawling and window breaking and illegal entry can be handled by a force that's trained to handle such matters with appropriate severity, and to keep their offenders out of the newspapers and out of jail. Because the parents of the kids are paying everyone's salaries, and rich folk around the world don't want to deal with petty embarrassment if it can be readily avoided.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by evil_spork on Friday April 15 2016, @02:13PM

      by evil_spork (6200) on Friday April 15 2016, @02:13PM (#332223)

      You realize there's a fair amount of violent crime that takes place on university campuses, right? Sexual assault is pretty common, unfortunately. There's also the potential for violence when you have a bunch of drunk undergrads who haven't learned to handle their alcohol. Plus, the university has a lot of valuable assets that they don't want to be stolen. University police actually serve a legitimate purpose, especially for a major university that might have over 30,000 students, a good portion of whom live on campus. They're almost certainly able to respond faster and perhaps more effectively to incidents on campus than municipal police. I've actually thought, in my experience at two major universities, that there weren't enough police at either. I've had many encounters with university police, including being the only person in a building because I'm working late and having a false alarm going off saying the building had been broken into. The police could have made things difficult for me, but instead the just asked to see my university ID, verified a couple of things over the radio, let me go within five minutes, and spent their time fixing the alarm. They were smart enough to figure out that I'd done nothing wrong and the alarm was the real problem. In my experience at universities, parking enforcement is far more evil than law enforcement.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @02:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @02:27PM (#332230)

        You realize there's a fair amount of violent crime that takes place on university campuses, right?

        And again, we go deeper... *Why* is that? What in the US system causes this that does not cause this in normal places in the world? Why is there so much violence in the US?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:19PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:19PM (#332298)

          No, you need to ask yourself why sexual assault is only a crime in the US. Why is considered ok to discriminate, demean, and rape women other places? That's why you don't have sexual assault in other "normal places in the world", it is because there IS no defined sexual assault because you can't have it; women are not to be respected where you come from.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:39PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:39PM (#332312)

            alternatively, they are not respected less than men, so a law that favors them isn't necessary

            not really sure of what the origin of the problem is, really, i can't speak for people outside of the united states

            but i will tell you we have some cultural/social issues in the united states that probably don't translate well to places outside, and we spend a lot of resources treating the symptoms of these issues, instead of trying to address the issues directly

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:21PM (#332301)

        I attended a state college; the campus police were actually considered a local branch of the state police. They could be granted authority to operate in other jurisdictions as necessary (I am unsure of the specifics of how that works). Note this also meant they received, at minimum, the same level of training and if memory serves, were required to hold at least a bachelor's degree (which may have been a higher minimum training than the actual state police).

        This was back just after 9/11 and, as it happened, the chief of the campus police was one of the few police people in the region to have formal anti-terrorism training, so the campus police would often be asked to provide training or operational support for local or state police in the region.

        The campus police were also justified because the college was some distance from the nearest town. It was somewhat isolated in mountains (only somewhat; road improvements meant town was only 10 minutes away by the time i left the college). The state police were permitted to operate with some degree of autonomy outside the college bounds because there were some homes further up the mountain and they could get there sooner in the event of an emergency.

        I know this because I used to chat up the police chief from time to time when I'd see him in the mess. He was a friendly guy. I am sorry I did not have the background to fully understand everything he'd talk about.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @03:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @03:50PM (#332254)

      It is a historical artifact. For a long time, especially in the more western parts of the country, Universities were the town. In fact, for one of the colleges I went to, the city actually contracts their police force from the university.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:47AM (#332177)

    "Vandals Carve Swastikas, Slurs Into Cars Parked At UC Davis"

    -- http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/10/13/vandals-carve-swastikas-slurs-into-cars-parked-at-uc-davis/ [cbslocal.com]

    "Swastikas Spray Painted at Off-Campus UC Davis Jewish Fraternity House"

    -- http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/Swastikas-Spray-Painted-at-Off-Campus-UC-Davis-Fraternity-House-290549801.html [nbcbayarea.com]

    "In February 2010, UC San Diego experienced a wave of hateful incidents targeting African American students."

    -- http://civilityproject.ucdavis.edu/ucsd_incident.html [ucdavis.edu]

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:21PM

    by bitstream (6144) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:21PM (#332300) Journal

    Is it this incident [youtube.com] in 2011 that had to be media washed? Guess the administration won't be happy if anyone wrote about it on any homepage served on campus..

    Don't forget, UCLA Student got tazered [youtube.com] in 2006. Seems they have been busy with article washing [wikipedia.org] as the incident doesn't seem to be mentioned any longer.

    Seems to be in line with the new society.. All image no substance?

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 15 2016, @07:59PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday April 15 2016, @07:59PM (#332393)

    This one is so boring my eyes glossed over and I skipped to the next one without even reading the summary. Compare to The Other Site's version:

    UC Davis Spent $175,000 To Bury Search Results After Cops Pepper-Sprayed Protestors

    Hmm. Much more attention-grabbing.

    Pros and cons. I think we tend to have less-misleading headlines/summaries over here, which is a good thing. I was getting pretty disgruntled around the time of the Slashcott when it seemed like every summary (over there) was lying to me somehow or another.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"