At the University of California-Davis, a group of stu­dents peace­fully protest­ing for the Occupy Wall Street move­ment were pep­per sprayed by cam­pus police.

In recent weeks, a video sur­faced of the inci­dent tak­ing place – although police had warned the pro­tes­tors to remove the tents before they took action, pep­per spray­ing them was the wrong way to han­dle the situation.

Those col­lege stu­dents had every right to protest on their cam­pus, and the author­i­ties had no rea­son to treat them as they did. Since the move­ment began, pro­tes­tors have been pep­per sprayed by police as a means of “con­trol­ling” the protestors.

The pro­tes­tors were not being vio­lent and were not dis­turb­ing the peace. A woman who was pep­per sprayed by police had to be taken to the hos­pi­tal to be treated for chem­i­cal burns.

The only actions the stu­dents par­took in were shout­ing chants at the police; they weren’t pulling out weapons and threat­en­ing them.

I once wrote a col­umn ear­lier this year about our gen­er­a­tion being too apa­thetic when it comes to social causes. Older gen­er­a­tions have com­plained about us not car­ing enough or not at all in some cases. Now that some stu­dents at UC Davis took action, they were pun­ished for it.

If we choose to do so, how are we sup­posed to advo­cate for change and get our voices heard if we are pep­per sprayed or beaten? Maybe I’m miss­ing a point, but I don’t think I am.

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza defended the officer’s actions by telling CBS Sacramento sta­tion KCRA that it wasn’t safe for stu­dents to camp on the quad and the officer’s safety was a con­cern because there were 200 peo­ple in the quad. Spicuzza has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave along with two other officers.

Linda Katehi, UC Davis Chancellor, has received crit­i­cism from stu­dents since the inci­dent. She said she told the chief of police to avoid vio­lence at all costs. Well, that didn’t hap­pen and it did get vio­lent on the author­i­ties’ end.

Claudia Morain, a UC Davis spokesper­son, said there were 35 police offi­cers on the scene, 50 occu­piers and 200 bystanders. The stu­dents or bystanders weren’t harm­ing any­one. They were peace­fully protest­ing. Morain even said she didn’t thor­oughly watch the videos and said no tent cities were going to be allowed for bud­get purposes.

UC Davis stu­dent Thomas Fowler who cap­tured the footage said he was appalled and speech­less by the actions of the police. It is appalling and cruel. The stu­dents were treated like rav­aging crim­i­nals when they were just sit­ting on the quad and chant­ing. How is that violent?

In these times with finan­cial aid resources dis­ap­pear­ing and tuition going up a cer­tain per­cent each aca­d­e­mic year, stu­dents’ opin­ions and voices need to be heard more than ever.

I don’t know how many times I’ve reit­er­ated the fact that if noth­ing is done, noth­ing will change for the better.

Some of you read­ing this may strongly dis­agree with me and think the police pep­per spray­ing the protest­ing stu­dents was the right thing to do. That’s your opin­ion and you are enti­tled to it.

However, if you’re just bitch­ing about col­lege being too expen­sive and not tak­ing even the tini­est bit of action to do some­thing about it, then don’t com­plain. It’s that simple.

I truly hope this inci­dent doesn’t occur on another col­lege cam­pus again. There is no rea­son to add vio­lence when there is no violence.