Regents! We Do Need Some Education!
Editorial Board | Nov 23, 2009 | Comments 4
BRANDON WONG | Staff Photographer
Protesters surround Regent Bruce B. Darling as he tries to leave after attending a meeting at UCLA.
The protest that ensued after the vote showed just how upsetting the news was. A group of around 300 students gathered outside of Covel Commons at UCLA, chanting loud enough for the Regents inside to hear the resounding cries of “Chop from the Top!” and “We’re fired up, we can’t take it no more!” Campus police dressed in full riot control gear were pelted with vinegar-soaked bandanas, picket signs, hot dogs and soda cans filled with change, as well as being verbally attacked by students in the crowd. Protesters pushed at the barricades separating them from the hall, and were forced back by security. 14 members of the public who were allowed into the boardroom to speak to the Regents were arrested for being disruptive and refusing to stop after their allotted time slot ended and their ruckus was deemed an unlawful assembly. They chanted, “We shall overcome” in unison.
It was the kind of scene that could have been taken out of a 1960s newsreel of youths protesting against the Vietnam War. While it was encouraging and exciting to see students be aware of the current economic affairs of the UC system, the protests were, in the end, ineffective.
As noble as the protester’s cause, in the end, the garbage-throwing and chanting did nothing but make these angry students look like a violent mob. Whether or not the accusations of police attacks are true, the protest escalated quickly into a small riot that required police action. The anger and frustration of these students was completely justified, but the violence was not.
As the members of the Board watched members of the public get dragged out in restraints, one woman sighed, “They just won’t listen to us! They don’t care … they’re so rude.” That is just how these Regents view us students, as rabble-rousers without a clue of what the circumstances are. This kind of protest doesn’t portray UC students positively in the eyes of the voting Regents, and it certainly doesn’t get them on our side.
Had this display of student activism been shown earlier, as opposed to on the day of the vote, the protest would have been more effective in impact. A protest helps galvanize people and attract attention for the cause, but it doesn’t affect change on the scale that would have changed the outcome of the Regents’ vote. It may garner media attention, but it doesn’t have the longstanding and necessary impact that would help affect real change.
As frustrating as it is to fight against a system run by condescending, inattentive and overpaid bureaucrats, sometimes you have to work within that system to get the results you want. The old adage of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” comes to mind. Now that the vote has tragically passed, UC students, employees and anyone else affected by the fee hikes and budget cuts should organize the fight against these problems at a governmental level and take the fight to Sacramento. Working with legislators and lobbyists to help support financial reform in California is a step in the right direction. We as students need to show the system that our UC education is worth fighting for by proving just how smart, proactive and organized we’ve learned to be.
These fee increases are coming at a devastating economic period for the whole country. Just as many of our students are suffering, so is the UC system and the state of California as a whole. The news of these increases is upsetting to all members of the UC system.
Our feelings are justified, but we need to go about it in a different way. Now is not the time for tantrums; now is the time for organization. If we join with those in charge, we can march on Sacramento and fight the root of the problem. We students can prove that we are not willing to let the system trample all over our education with fee hikes and budget cuts. The time has come for UC students to make the best of their current circumstances to prove to the system that they can take away our classes and our money, but they can’t take away our determination, intelligence and UC pride.
Send comments to newuopinion@gmail.com. Please include your name, year and major.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Filed Under: Opinion
[...] http://www.newuniversity.org/2009/11/opinion/regents-we-do-need-some-education/ Editorial from the UCI Student Newspaper responded to the UC Regents decision to approve the 32% fee increase for all UC campuses. Although the protest was for a good cause, the attitude of the editorial in regards to the protest was negative as it felt that the violence that erupted from the protest discredited the student’s intentions and the credibility of the protest. The article expressed frustration against the UC Regents who seem detached and indifferent to the protestor’s stories and pleas for helps. Even though the vote has passed, the war is not over. Students should continue to organize to fight against the problems of insufficient state funding and budget cuts that are taking away from the quality of education of the UC system. The article expresses that concerns should be focused on organization and petitioning to Sacramento. [...]
This country is poorly managed; people are not (fiscally) responsible. Congress spends money for the cash-for-clunker program but not on education. State and local govts provide generous health care and pension to their workers but raises fees big-time on students. UC administrators and some students and so-called labor-rightists hand out employment and benefits to contract workers at the expense of the students. Politicians and ignorant/self-centered voters simply commit too much $ on fixed expenditures.
Yes, had this display of student activism been shown earlier, the protest would have been more effective in impact. Student activism should have been shown by writing to the Congress when it stupidly authorized the cash4clunkers program and urging it to save the $ for education. Student activism should have been shown by telling the state and local legislators to not provide all these golden parachuttes and retirement packages. Student activism should have been shown by telling Michael Drake that he should not in-source those landscape and dining workers because we cannot and should not afford it. Student activism should have been shown by …..
This is one of the most disappointing articles the Editorial Board has ever written. You would think that the Editorial Board would have the courage, or the brains, to stand with the rest of the UC community in unison over the issue of corporate-state power and elitist education given that it is causing the tasering of dozens of students and increased tuition never seen in California history.
Instead, they show their true alliance with advertisers and the Regents by automatically calling the protests ‘ineffective.’ How cowardly and shameful of these writers to denounce a now international movement for free and emancipatory education from the comfort of their UC Irvine office. How crass and elitist of them to blindly side with the top of the power structure of UC instead of joining the rest of us who will go broke or drop out because of this increase. Millions of California students will avoid college altogether because of the burden of debt. Students now have the highest rate of suicide in the US than ever before, and increasing the cost of what should be a human right (and IS in Europe and elsewhere) only causes more depression, poverty, and ignorance.
I am ashamed to be an Anteater with such a quasi-fascist newspaper editorial board writing such a scating “report.” This Editorial Board had an opportunity to be the voice of justice and economic equality, and it boldly chose to drown the UC community with contempt and socio-economic hate.
I agree with this article wholeheartedly. I don’t know why the Regents would listen to us by throwing things and wrecking things. It just makes us seem like brats.
The silent protests would’ve been the way to go. Instead, it just looks like a lot of people cutting class (the classes they are paying for!!!) in order to be “a part of something.”
I’m not trying to generalize here; there were some people that genuinely believed in the cause but I can’t help but think that some people were there more for the spectacle than anything.