On November 18, 2011, Chancellor Katehi ordered Occupy movement protesters on the UC Davis campus to remove their tents from the quad. When a group of protestors engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience refused to move, campus police officers pepper sprayed them. Eleven protesters received medical treatment; two were hospitalized. Nathan Brown, assistant professor at UC Davis, said, "One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood."  The police have not responded to these claims.

According to police and university officials, the 35 or so officers present felt surrounded. One of the officers who used pepper spray was identified as Lieutenant John Pike. Ten arrests were made. A demonstrator said that the police were encircled by the demonstrators. "A collective decision was made on the fly to just sit in a circle arms linked legs crossed, with police officers and "prisoners" in the middle because we didn't want them arresting only 3 of us. It wasn't fair that 50 of us were there, and only a few arrested who hadn't volunteered to be arrested. There was still one walkway open that the police were going to use to walk the arrestees out. I saw some friends of mine sit down there, and they were my friends, so I joined them. We linked arms, legs crossed."