After nearly four hours of a staid legislative hearing over recent confrontations between campus police and university students, UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi today found herself face to face with a 24-year-old victim of last month's pepper spray incident who demanded to know why Katehi had been ducking her requests to meet for the past month.

"I've been contacting you every single day, calling your office, sending you emails, and your assistants said they passed the messages along," Jerika Heinze, a UC Davis senior, said as she stopped Katehi in a Capitol hallway as she was preparing to leave the hearing this afternoon. "You've never responded to me."

"Well, I've asked them to set an appointment with you..." Katehi said quietly as reporters gathered around recording the incident.

"No, you haven't," Heinze insisted. "You absolutely have not."

Moments later Katehi's chief of staff pulled Heinze aside to promise her an appointment while another UC official accompanying the embattled chancellor extracted her from the awkward setting and promised reporters she would talk to them for two seconds but not take questions.

Katehi responded by speaking briefly on how she felt the hearing had been "good," then was whisked away by her handlers in the latest public relations bruising for the chancellor.

The incident followed an informational hearing at the Capitol designed to ferret out information on university policies regarding student protests like the Nov. 18 UC-Davis incident and an earlier confrontation at UC Berkeley during which students were jabbed with riot batons.

UC President Mark Yudof, Katehi and others said they were working to come up with consistent policies to deal with student protests peacefully, and Katehi reiterated her position that she had not authorized the use of force to remove with two dozen tents that had been set up on the Quad in protest of tuition hikes.

Saying that she realized it was a "very burning question" for many, Katehi told the joint Senate-Assembly panel: "Did I direct the police to use pepper spray? And the answer is no. Did I direct the police to use force? And the answer is no."

At least five investigations into that incident and overall campus policies toward protests are now under way, and Yudof said he expected the most comprehensive answers from the probes to be available in March.

One of the probes was being handled by the Yolo County Sheriff and District Attorney, who asked Attorney General Kamala Harris to take it over to avoid a conflict of interest. Harris' office handed the matter back to Yolo County authorities, who said they will now conduct their own investigation despite limited resources.

But students, Katehi and others acknowledged that deep-seated anger over the spiking cost of a college education in California may lead to more confrontations statewide when classes resume in January.

Katehi said anger could lead to more encampments on campus or students taking over another building, as they did last month.

And, under questioning from one lawmaker about what she would do differently than she did on Nov. 18, she replied, "I have to tell you, if I knew that the police could not remove the tents peacefully we would not remove them."

Editor's note: Comments on this story were closed Dec. 15 because of personal attacks and other inappropriate comments.

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