New documents reveal that The University of California-Davis (UC-Davis) spent $175,000 trying to wipe away images and references of the infamous pepper spray incident of November 2011. According to The Sacramento Bee, the goal was to spend $15,000 a month in public funds to ensure that UC-Davis searches would result in only positive images and messages about the school.
The idea isn’t all that crazy–hundreds of people spend money with online consultation groups who specialize in making you seem pristine to a quick Google search. But this is the first time we can think of a public institution using public funds to try and hide something deplorable that they did.
So was that money well-spent? Sort of. If you search for “UC-Davis pepper spray” or anything regarding “UC-Davis police” there’s not much you can do to hide what happened between Lt. John Pike and the Occupy protestors that day.
But if you just search “UC-Davis” on Google Images, a ton of positive images and messaging pops up–despite the fact that the pepper spray incident was the single most covered event in the past decade at UC-Davis. It was also one of our favorite memes of the year.
The firm that UC-Davis hired, Nevins & Associates, was contracted for a six-month term at $15,000 a month. Here’s what they hoped to achieve during that time:
Truthfully we can understand the reasoning behind why UC-Davis would want to combat the “negative images” of their school, but when reports like this come to light you better have a damn good explanation.
