A friend and colleague of ours at UCSD, Ricardo Dominguez, is facing a series of charges, freezing of research funds and the possibility of losing his job over the B.A.N.G. Lab’s Transborder Immigrant Tool and a Virtual Sit-in held in conjunction with the UC Strikes.

Here are a few of things happening:

“Since the November of 2009 the Transborder Immigrant Tool has become a media event with many groups and individuals, such as Congressman Duncan Hunter in his Op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, calling for the defunding of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, the University of California system began a financial audit of the project on January 11, 2010, in which they requested that every member involved be interviewed by Audit & Management Advisory Services (UCSD). The exact investigations (they claim that they are multiple) under way have yet to be clarified by UCOP or other UC entities, but in the interviews thus far, TBT members have been questioned about the usage of the funds and the originality of the project. The investigation has ‘arrested’ TBT’s developmental process and core research matrix.”

“On March 4th, bang.calit2.net hosted a virtual sit-in against the UCOP website, providing a space for many people concerned with public education to embody their dissent online. As a result, UCSD IT Security shut down our server’s access to the Internet for eight days. After that, we were informed that an investigation by the Senior Vice Chancellor (SVC) was begun by the UCOP of Ricardo Dominguez seeking criminal charges for the virtual sit-in, despite the legal precedent that a virtual sit-in is political speech, not a DDOS attack. This investigation has been framed by SVC as potential reason to end Professor Dominguez’s tenure.”

Here is the full list of developments.

Please support Ricardo in anyway you can.