Napolitano’s gaffe stirs further dissent
UC president apologizes a day after she was overheard referring to protest as ‘crap’
SAN FRANCISCO — Janet Napolitano’s popularity took another nose dive this week when a video surfaced of the UC president calling a raucous protest at a regents meeting “crap.”
As students tossed fake money in the air and stripped off their shirts, Napolitano uttered her disgust to the board chairman on Wednesday, not realizing his mic was turned on.
“Let’s just break,” she tells Bruce Varner, the board chairman.
“What?” he says, amid the shouting students.
“Let’s just go,” she repeats.
“What?” “Let’s go. We don’t have to listen to this crap.”
Napolitano was quick to apologize Thursday, but her gaffe drove an even greater wedge between UC’s chief and students furious about planned tuition hikes. Protesters chanted “Dammit, Janet!” — a popular song from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” — at regents meetings, calling her out of touch and uninterested in their concerns. And now, this. “It’s indicative of how she feels when students raise their voice,” said UC Berkeley senior Spencer Pritchard, one of the protesters.
One of the main issues demonstrators raised Wednesday was UC Berkeley’s planned development of the Richmond Field Station into an international research campus. Students and community activists have been pushing UC to sign an agreement to bring jobs and other benefits to low-income Richmond residents.
The uproar started Wednesday, when UC Berkeley junior Kristian Kim told the regents that students and Richmond residents were not to be exploited. Then she whipped off her shirt, saying it was all she had left, kicking off a protest that briefly shut down the meeting.
Like Pritchard, Kim said the video confirmed what she suspected: “a fundamental disconnect between the UC president and the community members who actually make up the UC