By Karina Piser –
The first day of Fall quarter marked my first day back at UC Davis since the Spring tuition-hikes. After spending a year studying abroad, I was anxious to return to a university in crisis. When I signed up for classes I noticed that many discussion sections, which once served as the only way for students to get close attention from instructors, had been eliminated. Classes had been cut. I was, as promised, welcomed to a failing system.
The event was advertised on Facebook and flyers were distributed around campus. This is obviously not the first time students have attempted to mobilize collectively and stand up for what they feel is their university, one that is currently being destroyed by bureaucracy and poorly allocated funds. Months after the tuition increases, student activists hoped that their peers would take initiative and force the administration to listen.
Students gathered at noon on the quad and the protest and stormed buildings on campus chanting “Whose University? Our University!” and proceeded to Mrak Hall, home to the registrar’s office and the alleged source of the problem. Students sat on the floors and staircases with posters expressing their views on a variety of issues from tuition increases to the DREAM Act.
Although organizers anticipated a large turnout, it seemed that many students were either indifferent or did not have the time to attend. Earlier this week I asked my friends if they planned to join in protest, and their responses not only revealed apathy but a sense of disempowerment. “Look around and see how many people are here right now,” a student said. “The majority of the population agrees that these fee hikes are ridiculous but an extreme minority showed up to protest. That gives me a lack of confidence in our ability to make change.”
2010 is hardly 1968 and the revolutionary spirit that once dominated California campuses seems to have been swallowed by students who are consumed by their class schedules, internship opportunities and LSAT classes rather than a drive to overturn the system.
Busy schedules are not the only setback in mobilizing the student body. A student who attended the Mrak Hall sit-in asked what was done, substantively, to combat tuition increases and other controversial campus issues, such as the hotly contested presence of US Bank. ASUCD Senate member Osahon Ekhator made it clear that he had organized rallies and mobilized students in the past.
The problem seems to be a general lack of concreteness in the decision-making process. Protest organizers put pressure on ASUCD members to provide a plan of action, claiming that they had yet to directly fight the administration. Ekhator sympathized with this point of view but reminded students that “student government doesn’t have all the answers. I’m a student, I’m one of you, I show up to meetings and push ideas forward. At the end of the day if we don’t do it, nobody is going to do it for us.” Protest organizers expressed resentment to ASUCD, arguing that they were too caught up in the administrative aspects of solving the crisis.
When Jack Zwald, another ASUCD member, brought up Lobby Corps, a campus organization that mediates between students and the Capitol, protesters expressed resentment and frustration that more direct action could not be taken to effectuate change.
“We can write letters,” Zwald encouraged, “we can force them to become more transparent. We already have a couple of advocacy units, we’re trying to get a student representative to Davis City Council.”
His response did not satisfy protesters and was met with harsh criticism. An organizer who preferred to remain anonymous explained: “we came here to take direct action. Having ASUCD come here to join us wasn’t the issue, it’s encouraged and we want them to come here. It’s when they come here, to our attempt at direct action, and divert the energy and attention to institutional politics. That’s why there is resentment.”
Within the solution seems to lie the problem—student activism is, ultimately, merely student activism. Feelings of powerless are a product of the reality of the situation: the system is unjust and students are being cheated out of the education they deserve and pay for. This is not new rhetoric or new conflict. There is nothing nuanced about the student protests being held at UC Davis and at campuses across California today. And as a result, nothing is changing.
What was intended to be a protest disintegrated into an argument between student activists and student government representatives about the appropriate avenue for change—should we work within the system to combat it, or try to apply external pressure?
Hours of back-and-forth begged the question of What comes next? How can we, as students, manipulate our limited power to make a difference? In response to criticism of ASUCD’s alleged paralysis on the issue, Zwald reminded everyone that “at the end of the day it is an individual student’s choice whether to participate or not. We’re trying to get people involved in this sort of movement.” “We need to change priorities, we need to find a way for the administrators to take us seriously,” Ekhator added.
The conversation quickly shifted to the possibility of a student strike, which is a progression in the contestation process strongly advocated by students. Despite support for such a mobilization, students questioned a strike’s viability. Advertising opportunities were discussed and ASUCD’s budget was called into question.
“We are college students,” a participant said. “We are a lot smarter than we give ourselves credit for. This is like making a storm in a cup of water,” she said in reference to the protest’s low turnout. “I haven’t seen more than 100 or 200 students at a protest on a campus of at least 20,000. We have to use our intelligence intelligently.” She encouraged the use of the media to diffuse the message and others were receptive to the idea.
The need for an organized strike was unanimously supported, even among graduate students not directly affected by the tuition hikes. “The administration recently walked out on TAs and readers,” a graduate student said with frustration. “We’re going to stop grading papers and stop going to sections,” he threatened.
ASUCD members encouraged institutional action whereas protesters stressed the importance of a collective and direct effort. “People need to see a presence on campus,” an organizer said. “We need to make our voice heard against the administration and take action because they are not doing their job of representing the students or making education a top priority.”
The participants anticipate a November 1st strike and would like to have weekly meetings outside of Wellman on Wednesdays at 7pm. ASUCD intends to work with students to find a means to influence legislation to remedy the current crisis.
“The participants anticipate a November 1st strike and would like to have weekly meetings outside of Wellman on Wednesdays at 7pm. ASUCD intends to work with students to find a means to influence legislation to remedy the current crisis.”
Who is going to get hurt by students striking? Seems like it would be students, not the administration. Who is going to get hurt if students are able to mobilize and influence legislation? Not students, but that part of the administration that needs to be changed. I encourage students to work within the system – ultimately it will be more effective and hurt a lot less…
[quote]Although organizers anticipated a large turnout, it seemed that many students were either indifferent or did not have the time to attend.[/quote]
Having recently graduated, I think I know why this is.
Most students recognize the inherent stupidity of not attending the classes they paid for to march around the campus and protest a local administration that has no realistic control on the fees imposed on the students. If you’re going to protest do it somewhere where the decisions are actually made. ie take a short drive to Sacramento or find a UC Regents meeting.
It doesn’t help that most of the protests last year involved actively interrupting classes by pulling fire alarms and such. That’s one heck of a way to alienate the people you are supposedly ‘helping’ by protesting.
In sum, protesting at UCD about issues that the UCD admin has little to no control over is a fools errand and I think most students recognize this.
Good job writing this article, Ms. Piser. You intelligently give us the student point of view, which we don’t see nearly enough of. In fact, the phrase “their university…is currently being destroyed by bureaucracy and poorly allocated funds…” succinctly sums up the cause of the myriad problems facing students today. True, as you say, “it is not 1968.” Yet, that is no reason students should succumb to apathy and the advice of commenter “nvn8v” that “protesting at UCD…is a fool[‘]s errand.” I disagree with “nvn8v” on this. For always there is the opportunity for media exposure of student concerns, which ripples out from the original protest, if intelligently orchestrated. Sometimes, to disagree with E. Musser, this opportunity to take advantage of media outlets and get the message out is far more effective than “working within the system.”
As Mario Savio, spokesman for the original 1964 student strikes at UC Berkeley declared:
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
“2010 is hardly 1968 and the revolutionary spirit that once dominated California campuses seems to have been swallowed by students who are consumed by their class schedules, internship opportunities and LSAT classes rather than a drive to overturn the system. “
Your 2010 description of UCD actually sounds like UCD in 1968- we had a more compelling cause but UCD was very apathetic. Nothing has really changed.
If you do protest against the higher tuition I think you have to improve the focus of the message. In 1968 we had a simple message that everyone understood – Get Out!
#1 Focus on the staggering increases over the past decade – the Education Fee has increased 250% over that period – from $906 per quarter to $3134. 250% is a huge number and the message needs to be Enough is Enough! By the way, I have been paying those tuition payments, each quarter for the past ten years and I think I just paid my last one (at least that is my hope).
#2 Focus on ways to make the system more efficient. Currently there is too much administation, there is very little sharing of services between the different campuses and the focus on cost savings is completely inadequate. Force the UC System to become more modern instead of just maintaining the same of processes they had in 1968. Then they need to extend the focus to things like books – there is no reason other than greed that students need to shell out $500 to $600 per quarter for books.
In 1968 almost 300 American soldiers a week were dying in Vietnam. 850,000 young men faced the draft lottery the following year. Anyone who remembers that era may find it hard to consider these issues equally compelling.
BK: “Sometimes, to disagree with E. Musser, this opportunity to take advantage of media outlets and get the message out is far more effective than “working within the system.”
It is one thing to get the message out via the media, another to advocate anarchy…
Alphonso makes excellent points on how students need to FOCUS their message…
I understand Don Shor’s point – but right now I feel as if the heart of our public higher education system is at stake. Only the wealthy are going to be able to attend the public universities in CA if our state gov’t is not more careful. I do not want to see the privatization of public universities, so that only the wealthy students, out of state students and foreign students can attend, but it is out of reach for in state students who are not wealthy. NO TRIVIAL MATTER!
What Karina Piser doesn’t understand is that it’s not that most students are apathetic or busy. Rather it’s that most students regard the demonstrators as a bunch of whiners.
University of California students are among the most privileged members of society. They are given an opportunity to get an education that, a generation ago, was available only to the rich. The cost is subsidized to the extent that those with family incomes under $70,000 pay no fees. Yet they feel they have a right to get the California taxpayers, many of whom never had their opportunities, pay even more to subsidize them. When I hear this brainless drivel it makes me want to cut all funding for UC.
Fortunately, most college students are indeed smarter than people give them credit for. That’s why they shun these pathetic losers and their demonstrations.
a generation ago, UC tuition was nearly free. that was our parents’ generation, not ours. it was two generations ago that education was only available to the rich, before the GI bill and the 1960 master plan on education. students today have huge debts, whereas their parents a generation (or two, for some freshman) ago came out of a UC education debt-free.
in fact, i would argue that anxiety about the cost of education and student debt, as well as a brutal economy for young people post-graduation, is part of what dissuades the sort of mass activism that broke out in the 60s.
[quote]What Karina Piser doesn’t understand is that it’s not that most students are apathetic or busy. Rather it’s that most students regard the demonstrators as a bunch of whiners. [/quote]
I find this a strange comment because Karina is a student and you are not a student.
im a student and i feel that there protests must be middle of the road…make some noise but dont interrupt any classes or labs
YEAH, AND MEG WHITMAN WANTS TO PUT THE TASK OF “FIXING” THE UC SYSTEM TO THE SAME PEOPLE THAT ARE SCREWING US IN THE FIRST PLACE.
THE CHANCELLORS AND OTHER ELITE DIRECTORS OF THE UC SYSTEM ARE A BUNCH OF HYPOCRITS. THEY MAKE MILLIONS, AND TAKE MORE FROM COMPANIES LIKE MONSANTO TO CONDUCT “SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH”..
THEY USE THE UC NAME TO LEGITIMIZE THE “RESEARCH” AND MANY WILLING UC PROFESSORS ARE WILLING TO STEP FORWARD AND DO THE DIRTY DEEDS OF THE CORRUPT CORPORATE “SPONSORS.”
THE WHOLE THING IS A GIANT MESS AND THE STUDENTS ALL NEED TO JUST DEMAND THEIR MONEY BACK AND STOP BUYING INTO THIS RIDICULOUS CHARADE..IT’S NOT AN EDUCATION…IT’S A 50,000 DOLLAR PIECE OF PAPER AND IS THE BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.
THE UC SYSTEM HAS MADE A COMPLETE MOCKERY OUT OF “EDUCATION”
I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT THE ANSWER TO UC IS TO RAISE FEES. HOW ABOUT WE CUT THE RIDICULOUS COMPENSATION BENEFITS FOR THE CHANCELLORS AND DIRECTORS.
THEY GET ENOUGH IN BRIBES FROM CORPORATIONS..THEY CAN LIVE JUST FINE OFF OF THE BRIBES.
indigorocks: please stop using all caps.
Whose university our university
Mr. Shor opines:
…In 1968 almost 300 American soldiers a week were dying in Vietnam. 850,000 young men faced the draft lottery the following year. Anyone who remembers that era may find it hard to consider these issues equally compelling.”
Of course, Mr. Shor and his generation don’t find today’s students’ problems–seeing their tuition skyrocket while the number of classes and services shrink…the quality of the education they need to get ahead in and understand today’s world–“compelling.” Mr. Shor had been there and done the education thing long, long ago. He’s out of that game so he can dismiss “these issues” rather thoughtlessly. It is not an either/or situation here, Mr. Shor. Your generation had its problems 42 years ago, and very serious problems they were, I’m not denying that. But don’t deny these students today are hurting, and anxious about their future. Show a little sympathy, seek out and talk to some, find out what’s going on, instead of being so smug about the potential end of quality higher education in California as we know it.
PS: I like Indigorocks’s ALL-CAPS, a little font variety never hurt anybody and is fun for the eye. Kind of like a homeowner who paints his house purple in a tract where the homeowners’ association dictates all houses be battleship gray.
42 years ago, I was 11 years old. You are making a lot of assumptions about me. My children are both in college, by the way.
Front page story in this week’s Sacramento News & Review:
The regents club: Conflicts of interest are nothing new at the University of California, but they may be getting worse.
[url]http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=1854684[/url]
It doesn’t make Diane Feinstein & husband, Richard Blum, look good.
Hi Bryon, and Karina,
I do think you deserve a more thoughtful response than my earlier abrupt comment. Every generation of students, upset about something, decries how modern students don’t have the passion or commitment that students had in the 1960’s. That is correct, and my point was that the issues facing that generation (older than me) were literally existential. As my older brother tried to choose where to go to college, he first had to get through the draft lottery. About 1 in 4 got lottery numbers low enough to compel them into the military. Nearly everyone knew someone who had come back from Vietnam – one way or another.
That brings people into the streets. Campus-wide strikes and noisy protests seem a lot more appropriate when it’s a matter of life and death. And even still, the majority of students did not participate in the campus unrest, continuing to go to class on schedule when they could.
When you hold protests too often, and for reasons that appear comparatively trivial, it makes them much less effective.
Part of the problem is that the anger and protests seem misdirected, and that the students seem overly focused on their own problems when the recession is taking such a huge toll across the whole population. It is unfortunate that student fees are going up. But what exactly do the students want legislators to do about it? Unemployment is very high. Business revenues are down. Local governments don’t have money for basic social services. It seems that students are demanding that they get a proportionally larger share of a shrinking pie, and that begs the question: at whose expense?
The simplest thing that students who are upset with the university can do is enroll elsewhere. The community colleges and state colleges are crowded, but they are much cheaper and anyone who can get into UC can certainly get into them. I say this as someone who attended UC and whose parents spent their careers at UC. So I regret the path the university seems to be going: towards greater privatization, less accessible, and less affordable. But that is a sign of the times, and I don’t see why UC students should be immune to the adverse economy.
There are ways to get your education funded. The GI Bill is incredibly generous. Scholarships are out there. Starting at community college, and finishing at UC, may be more cost-effective. UC is trying to adapt to changing economic and demographic circumstances, and I don’t see any easy way out. When he was pressed about rolling back student fees, Jerry Brown gave a very realistic answer: he will “do the best I can to hold down the fees,” but added, “We’re in a tough bind and we’re all going to have to sacrifice.”
To Don Shor: I really think you are missing the point here. I don’t think the students would be nearly as upset with the fee hikes if the UC adminstration was acting in a fair manner. But what we have seen is a 32% hike in student fees in a single year, as certain UC administrators were given bonuses, several Chancellors and the UC President were hired at a huge increase in salary; campus building goes on unabated; federal research dollars go to fund obscure research and the like. It seems as if something is horribly out of whack the priorities when it comes to spending, the “different pots of money” argument notwithstanding.
From the article wdf1 cites above: “But while education is taking a beating, this investigation reveals that some members of the board of regents have benefited from the placement of hundreds of millions of university dollars into investments, private deals and publicly held enterprises with significant ties to their own personal business activities. Conflicts of interest have arisen because some members of the regents’ investment committee, individuals who are also Wall Street heavy hitters, modified long-standing UC investment policies. Specifically, they steered away from investing in more traditional instruments, such as blue-chip stocks and bonds, toward largely unregulated and risky “alternative” investments, such as private equity and private real-estate deals.
The activities of two regents in particular—Richard C. Blum, financier and husband to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and fellow financier Paul Wachter—are spotlighted. (“Students strike back,” an SN&R story in this series from February 18, detailed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s conflicts of interest as an ex officio regent who sits on the investment committee.)
State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was asked to review the findings of this investigation prior to publication. “These are amazing conflicts of interest,” he concluded. “They happened after the UC Regents’ investment committee drastically changed policy away from investing in fixed-income securities and into risky private equity buyout funds—thus enriching several regents with ties to those funds.””
Don Shor: “The simplest thing that students who are upset with the university can do is enroll elsewhere. The community colleges and state colleges are crowded, but they are much cheaper and anyone who can get into UC can certainly get into them. I say this as someone who attended UC and whose parents spent their careers at UC. So I regret the path the university seems to be going: towards greater privatization, less accessible, and less affordable. But that is a sign of the times, and I don’t see why UC students should be immune to the adverse economy.”
I believe the idea of forcing students to attend two years of a community college for economic reasons, and then attending the last two years at a university is the model of the future, but a very unsatisfactory one. First of all, the quality of the education at the community college level is not as good as the university level. Instructors at community colleges only have to have a Masters degree in the subject matter they are teaching. Full professors at universities have to have PhDs. The access to lab and other technical equipment, variety of classes, etc. is much more extensive at the university level. And the transfer process from a community college to a university is problematic, even tho recently they have tried to make improvements. What we are doing by adopting such a model is reducing the excellence of our higher educational system – a very sad and disappointing development. Students should be upset about this, as well as the notion that only the wealthy will be able to obtain a decent education from 4 years at a university. The middle income and perhaps even the low income will be shut out of that opportunity.
First of all, the quality of the education at the community college level is not as good as the university level. Instructors at community colleges only have to have a Masters degree in the subject matter they are teaching. Full professors at universities have to have PhDs.
The advantage of PhD experience is that you may have much deeper knowledge in your field of specialty. But that doesn’t exactly make you a better teacher. Community colleges mostly teach beginning level courses (“lower division”), which don’t involve getting into the kind of depth of knowledge that PhD experience would typically bring.
The reason that U.C.’s require PhD’s is not so much that it would represent a quality teacher, but that a PhD would have a track record of doing research. UC’s want to be research institutions, significantly. A Masters graduate doesn’t have the kind of research track record that a PhD has.
Mr. Shor:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply to Karina’s article and my comment. I’d just clarify that you are identifying tactics with appropriateness of causes–i.e., taking to the streets was okay, and understandable by you relative to The Vietnam War and the deaths of young men of your generation. I’d just point out in response that also, the protests were over the unjustness of that war, waged not to protect our shores, but for nebulous reasons that were never really explained. Unjustness is also relevant (to use a great Sixties word) students’ concerns today.
One issue which rises above all others, in my view, is misdirection of funds. If UC Davis spent less on the massive building program that’s been ongoing for decades and is now intensifying, there would be more funds available for education. Also, just to throw light on a specific funding problem, when was the last time anybody took a hard look at the very top-heavy administration? What do all those vice-chancellors and their voluminous staffs do? How do they contribute to the UC Davis educational mission? This kind of distortion of the human focus of the University of California is what Mario Savio was addressing all those years ago, not just the Vietnam War, which hadn’t really escalated much in 1964, when he spoke.
Anyway, injustice is a common thread in motivations of protesters.