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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?


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  • (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