Let's All Talk About The Stuff That UC Davis Spent $175k Trying To Keep Off These Internets
from the paging-babs dept
As you'll probably recall, back in late 2011 a group of UC Davis students held a protest on campus as part of the Occupy movement. The lasting memory from that protest was one UC Davis police officer casually strolling past a line of students seated in a row and cavalierly spraying pepper spray directly into their faces. Even though this happened half a decade ago, let's all talk about it again now, because UC Davis recently revealed it spent $175,000 trying to make sure we wouldn't.
The payments were made as the university was trying to boost its image online and were among several contracts issued following the pepper-spray incident. Some payments were made in hopes of improving the results computer users obtained when searching for information about the university or Katehi, results that one consultant labeled “venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor.”Those funds, spent by a public university, mind you, were spent in the wake of the pepper spraying incident specifically to reformulate the image of UC Davis by obfuscating search results, web mentions of the incident, and by crafting a deluge of other UC Davis content that was decidedly more brand-friendly. But, hey, are you still confused as to what incident we're talking about here? Maybe this video of the incident will help jog your memory.
Others sought to improve the school’s use of social media and to devise a new plan for the UC Davis strategic communications office, which has seen its budget rise substantially since Katehi took the chancellor’s post in 2009. Figures released by UC Davis show the strategic communications budget increased from $2.93 million in 2009 to $5.47 million in 2015.
What should be readily apparent to you by now is that trying to bury factual if unfortunate history by hiring so-called brand reputation groups works about as well as trying to cover up your inability to cook a decent meal by dumping chocolate icing on everything you make. Sure, icing is good, but you still burnt that bone-in ribeye, you fool.
More importantly, in true Streisand Effect fashion, the attempted coverup of the incident now has us all discussing it again. And not only discussing the incident, but multiplying information about the incident, and footage of it, throughout the internet.
UC Davis spends $175,000 to remove pepper spray references from the internet.
Twitter and Facebook are replacing them at no charge. — Popehat (@Popehat) April 14, 2016
It's probably time for at least our institutions of higher learning to understand that using reputation management companies, paying them thousands of dollars, is the least effective way to respond to a bad PR incident. Even outside PR voices are shaking their heads at UC Davis' actions.
“I would say that it is common for an individual who might be applying for a job or an individual who has been wrongly maligned to go to a company like Reputation.com, but for a public university that is funded through taxpayer funds, who has repeatedly stepped into a vast hole, it is surprising that they thought this could be done without the light of day shining on the act,” said Doug Elmets, a Sacramento public affairs consultant. “It is one more example of how out of touch the leadership at UC Davis is when it comes to their public perspective.”Interestingly, as a result of some actions taken by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, students are once again protesting, occupying the areas around her office and insisting they won't leave until she has resigned. It should be interesting to see if the school put as much money and effort into reforming campus policing as they did in trying to cleanse the internet of its history.
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Filed Under: pepper spray, reputation management, streisand effect
Companies: uc davis
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UC Davis is has changed it's name to: UC Streisand.
Back to you Tim.
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Reputation/brand management companies...
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Not just least effective
Personally, whenever I see that someone has hired a reputation management company -- especially an online one -- the message that I get is that they have done something truly horrible that they are trying to cover up.
So the mere involvement of such companies is not just ineffective, it's counterproductive.
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Re: Not just least effective
Which is as you say, counterproductive.
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Re: Not just least effective
"We fire cops who behave this way" is a better response than *impression of Bart Simpson* "I didn't do it."
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A sign of the times
The Police do not protect you or anyone, they are there to ONLY enforce the law!
In fact the Supreme Court has already made it clear that the police are not obligated to assist you in an emergency!
Go ahead, keep trying to destroy the 2nd... the police state will eventually show you why we need it!
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Re: A sign of the times
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Re: A sign of the times
"On my honor,
I will never betray my badge,
my integrity, my character,
or the public trust.
I will always have the courage
to hold myself and others
accountable for our actions.
I will always uphold the Constitution,
the community,
and the agency I serve,
so help me God.
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Re: Re: A sign of the times
You do not even have to directly harm a citizen to break that Oath, just stand by like several other cops when a fellow cop does it.
You have to go a long way to find cop that would turn on another cop to protect a citizen.
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Ah, you're a "Google Glass is half empty" sort.
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Meanwhile at UC Davis...
Seconded!
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Taking bets the dean of the school and the admins pocketed around 90% of that money.....
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Secondly if you have to use a reputation management company to attempt to increase the favorability of your reputation, then you are doing it wrong. So many shady types have tried to adjust the internet reputation through this manner, just going this route leaves a less than favorable opinion.
Mainly because you haven't done the necessary to cause people to believe you. Instead of taking the easy way that doesn't work, the initiators almost always leave out the important first step of evaluation change and then executing it to fix the issue.
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Lt. Pike was the sadistic, sociopathic thug who viciously assaulted peaceful protesters.
FTFY
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Chocolate icing?
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UC Davis is a mess. It's been a mess for a while and by the look of things, it's only getting worse. Katehi is a disgrace to the human race.
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(Having worked at a University before, this is the arrogance of universities...)
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Protecting the image of the school and its chancellor trumps reality. We can keep throwing money at things to make them go away, there is no way anyone will remember the assaults, the flip-flopping, the overblown reactions leading up to that moment when it appears the school and its leadership were offended that their lessers would make demands and think they would get them heard & acted upon.
This event was just a culmination of a series of events when those with power thought they could control reality, and took extreme measures to remove any threat to their control.
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Don't use euphimisms
Don't use euphemisms. It's called propaganda!
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one of the commenters on the popehat tweet linked an article about college admins joining the devry (for-profit) board that featured katehi because she bypassed state law on the way to that trough.
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Email the Prez
Let her know how you feel about the $175K spent on what is really about scrubbing the Davis chancellor’s name.
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Thanks for the reminder, UC Davis
You coward. Sad day.
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Oops nearly forgot!!!
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Re: Oops nearly forgot!!!
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You'd think that they'd learn to not pull this stupid cr@p
Sgt. Pepper defends spraying APEC protesters
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sgt-pepper-defends-spraying-apec-protesters-1.174752
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