November 18 and 19, 2009

This past week has been one of the most maddening weeks of my time as a student at UCLA.  First and foremost, the UC Board of Regents met at UCLA in Covel Commons on Tuesday through Thursday.  On Wednesday, the Committee on Finance voted to preliminarily approve a 32% student fee (aka tuition) increase – 16% hike in Winter 2010 and then another 16% hike in Fall 2010, which was finalized on Thursday by the full Board.  What this means is that an undergraduate (in-state) in the UC will be paying about $30,000 for a school year (fees, room & board).  People getting their masters in Social Work will be paying about $40,000 per year for fees, room and board.  Other professional students (law, medical, MBA, etc.) might be paying on up to $50,000 per year or more... AT A “PUBLIC” UNIVERSITY!!! And yet we get less services and less courses, making it harder to graduate.

It is not acceptable for the state of California to DIVEST from public education and invest in the incarceration of its young people!  California is the ONLY state in the U.S. to have a larger percentage of its state budget dedicated to the management of prisons than to public higher education. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

It is not acceptable for the state of California to balance the state budget on the backs of students. The GOP refuses to make the wealthy citizens of the state pay their fair share for services that everyone benefits. So instead, an UNFAIR TAX on students in the California public higher education system is passed onto students without adequate representation.  Where is the democracy and shared governance in this?! I thought taxation without representation was an injustice upon which the United States was founded?  While yacht owners get their taxes rolled back in the state legislature, the state’s infrastructure must be supported some how… and so the powers that be in Sacramento keep cutting and divesting from THE FUTURE of California.  And the Regents of the UC and leadership of the CSU and Community College system keep passing on the burden to students. During the GREAT DEPRESSION, the highest paid administrators and faculty took voluntary pay cuts and the state DID NOT CUT funding from public higher education.  Over the last decade, UC student fees have increased almost 300%, university staff have been laid off, furloughed, and taken pay cuts, which means less services and classes for students.  All the while the highest paid in the university have had increases in their salaries by almost 50%!! All the while, the Regents say they have no choice but to raise fees. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

So if you’re wondering why students in the UC are taking over buildings (Wheeler, Kresge & Kerr, and Campbell), this is why… We have no say in this system of governance and it is clear to us that the system is BROKEN.  With a 300% student fee increase over the last decade, we finally hit our breaking point!  What we are saying with our rallies, protests, and building take-overs is:
1.    This is the University of California! So we the people are taking OUR UNIVERSITY BACK!
2.    There is clearly a LACK OF LEADERSHIP in the state.  Things had better be fixed soon! You can’t just keep passing the burden of the budget off on students and workers anymore!

It is not acceptable for a public university to be charging such outrageous amounts and stay committed to its mission of serving the people and being a “tuition free” school (this is why in the UC it’s called “fees” and not “tuition”)! It makes this great university inaccessible to way too many Californians.  Ironically, the UC was FREE or near free when the students coming here were almost all White.  Now that Whites are no longer the majority of students in the UC, students are forced to mortgage their education and future!  This is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

This is why I see these fee increases as an attack on Students of Color, and why so many students in the UC are fighting back.  But within this emerging community of struggle, students of color continue to be marginalized.  My feelings of being attacked and under siege were exacerbated on Thursday when Campbell Hall at UCLA was taken over and occupied by mostly (from what I saw) White men, who demanded "nothing" in their statement.  At first when I found out the news, I was very excited and simultaneously confused.  Campbell Hall is home to the Asian American Studies Center, American Indian Studies Center, the Center for Community College Partnerships, and the Academic Advancement Program. All of these units were created through student struggle for justice in education.  All of them serve the educational agenda of empowering marginalized students and communities.  Students and communities fought hard for these spaces to be established and today, in tough budget times, to be maintained!

For many students of color at UCLA, Campbell Hall is sacred grounds for the safe space it provides to so many of us in academia, which can be very hostile.  For me, it’s where I have grown up as a scholar activist and where I found refuge when I have felt attacked. It’s given me space to build community with other activists and progressive scholars.  When a visiting lecturer in my department (Education) told me my research was not relevant unless I was focusing on the “dysfunction of Chinese families” and “why Chinese parents are racist” I found other students in Campbell Hall to talk to about the incident and to strategize to fight back and work to address the problem.  I didn’t feel so alone at UCLA inside of Campbell.  

Campbell Hall is also sacred grounds because it is where two Black Panthers – Bunchy Carter and John Huggins – were killed by the U.S. government in 1969.  Anyone who calls Campbell Hall “home” knows, respects, and honors their lives and recognize the reality that fighting for justice is often viewed by those in power as a threat.  In fact, the occupiers renamed the building Carter-Huggins Hall, which I think is something UCLA should do anyway.

However, anyone who knows Carter-Huggins Hall (Campbell) knows that seeing more than one White person at a time in that space is odd.  So on Thursday morning when I dropped by Carter-Huggins to support the occupation, two things struck me. First, when I peered into the building, I saw four White men with bandanas on looking really bored inside.  Immediately, my heart sank. Something didn’t feel right.  Second, there were NO COPS, NO MEDIA, NO OTHER PROTESTERS outside of the building.  Throughout the day, I saw one police officer pass by the building.  I also saw about 15-20 people gathered on the steps outside, also looking bored.  I asked them “Why did the occupiers choose Campbell Hall? Why not Murphy (administration) or the Faculty Center? Clearly, administration doesn’t care about what’s inside Campbell!” (I’ll get to this point in a minute.) They said “for the symbolism of the 2 slain Black Panthers,” and proceeded to try to educate me about them.

The real action was happening over at Covel Commons, about a mile away from Carter-Huggins, where the Regents were holding their meeting.  There, I joined with hundreds of people – a much more racially diverse group of students, staff, and faculty from UCLA and other UC campuses – to make noise since we were not allowed inside of the meeting to make our points heard.  We were surrounded by police officers wearing riot gear holding batons at the ready.  On Wednesday, when we were being loud, several Black male students were tasered and hit by police officers in a frightening scene (video).  On Thursday, police officers sprayed mace directly into students faces and two Filipino American student members of Samahang Pilipino were tased by police officers.

I’m still trying to make sense of the incidents of the last week.  I am both saddened and disgusted.  I have been surprised at how violated I have felt by the Regents actions to violate the principles of our public university and by the violent treatment of my fellow UC students by university police. But for those of us who also call Carter-Huggins home, we had to endure a third violation of being displaced and having our home occupied by strangers who claimed to “liberate” the building (of marginalized members of the UCLA community) in the name of justice.  I never actually really understood how much Carter-Huggins meant to me until it was taken away from me for a day.

Unlike the other building occupations at UC Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Davis, the people who took over Carter-Huggins chose a building that apparently doesn’t mean a whole lot to university administration.  At the other 3 campuses, protesters were forcefully removed and arrested.  At UCLA, student leaders from the Asian Pacific Coalition, Pacific Islander Students Association, American Indian Students Association, and the Academic Advancement Program, along with Chicana/o history scholars and other student leaders were able to talk with the occupiers and convinced them to end the occupation of our home.  The occupiers were not arrested. There were no police officers near the building.  I imagine UCLA administrators reacting this way to the takeover, “Huh. Interesting. Well, that’s one less group of people we have to worry about on this campus.”

This leads me to another reason I am so saddened and angry by the week’s events.  Our home was taken and no one in power did ANYTHING about it.  People from the community had to take matters in their own hands, unsure if they were risking being taken hostage.  We didn’t know who was inside. It’s unclear who they were, but it was clear their action was separate from the rest of the community. And unlike what the occupiers claim, we weren’t free to come and go in and out of the building.

Had the occupiers chosen to take over Murphy or the Faculty Center, many more students, including myself, would have supported the building occupation.  Administration would have sent more than one officer to the scene.  Media would have given it more attention.  But these people, whom I believe are not very familiar with UCLA or Campbell Hall history beyond the killings of Carter and Huggins, made a severe tactical error on Wednesday night when they refused to listen to UCLA students of color who told them Campbell was the wrong choice.  The strategic error has led to the current status at UCLA – a pre-Thanksgiving and final exam period calm, as if nothing happened last week.  At least they apologized when they left peacefully.

I’m not sure how this will all resolve itself, if at all.  All I know is that I continue to feel under siege by the powers above (mostly White men) and by people who have claimed to be my allies in struggle (mostly White men).  If we are to ever be successful in advancing justice, we must listen to each other, respect each other, and take back OUR UNIVERSITY together.