Black UCI Students Speak Out

Chancellor Drake under pressure.  Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2013

In the wake of the "blackface" video by an Asian American fraternity at UCI, Black students have now issued a set of demands to the UC Irvine administration, headed by Chancellor Michael V. Drake, who is also Black.

Here is their statement:

Black students at the University of California, Irvine have the right to enjoy freedom of movement and association, security of housing, and the pursuit of education without fear of violation by other students, faculty, staff, and the police. We, the members of Black Leaders on Campus* (BLOC), call upon the UCI adminis...tration to foster a campus environment for Black students that is free of violence. To this end, the Division of Student Affairs must truly adhere to its stated mission “to promote the general welfare of the campus community within the framework of the UC Irvine values of respect, intellectual curiosity, integrity, commitment, empathy, [and] appreciation.” Combating the climate of anti-Blackness at UCI calls for both the refusal to accommodate attacks on Black peoples and cultures and the allocation of resources to meet the pressing needs of Black students. Our demands, therefore, fall into two broad groups, one punitive and one proactive.

1a) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration cease referring to incidents of anti-Blackness as “isolated” or “rare,” including the Lambda Theta Delta (LTD) videos recently circulated on the Internet. The use of terms such as “isolated” and “rare” suggests that these incidents stand alone rather than collectively indicating a larger, structural problem on campus and in society.

1b) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration create and implement a zero-tolerance policy for anti-Blackness. This policy must be formalized in writing with the participation of two BLOC-elected undergraduate student representatives. This policy must place the offending organization on probation for a minimum of one year and revoke the membership of any individuals found to have committed particular offenses. Conditions of probation would include, but would not be limited to: loss of the use of campus space, on-campus advertising, and university funding. If the offender is not affiliated with any campus organization, other punitive measures could be devised.

1c) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration create a BLOC-elected, UCI-funded undergraduate student position to supervise the implementation of the university’s zero-tolerance policy on anti-Blackness. This student, holding either a major or minor in African American Studies, will work alongside the UCI administration in the investigation of alleged incidents of anti-Blackness, attending all relevant meetings. This student will have the additional power to design educational programs to combat the climate of anti-Blackness on campus. This student will retain autonomy in order to ensure transparency.

2a) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration create and fund a new student outreach and retention center, modeled after the UC Berkeley Black Recruitment and Retention Center (BRRC). The violence Black students face on and off campus has documented negative effects on our physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. These negative effects unnecessarily impede Black students’ academic pursuits and intellectual development and require dedicated resources. If the university administration is committed to combating the climate of anti-Blackness at UCI, then it must also mitigate such negative effects in order for Black students to thrive here. The UCI Student Outreach and Retention Center (SOAR) is spread thin in its support of a broad range of student populations and is therefore unable to address the specific negative effects of anti-Blackness and the particular barriers to recruiting Black students to UCI. Two BLOC-elected student representatives and two African American Studies faculty members, among others, would participate in the hiring of the Center’s director.

2b) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration financially support the newly founded UCI James Baldwin Debate Society. The Society requires funding for a director, graduate assistantships, debater scholarships, team travel and lodging costs at national debate competitions, and other operating expenses. The skills acquired in college debate – careful research, rational argumentation, decision-making, and conflict resolution – would empower Black students to better combat anti-Blackness in their academic, occupational, and social lives. While other debate organizations exist on campus, none provide a dedicated safe space for Black students to fully participate. The UCI James Baldwin Debate Society serves as a productive venue for Black students otherwise living and learning under the duress of the campus climate. Two BLOC-elected student representatives and two African American Studies faculty members, among others, would participate in the hiring of the Society’s director.

2c) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration restore the dedicated Housing Assistant position to the Ele Si Rosa Parks African American Studies Theme House. At present, the Rosa Parks House, as a result of budget cuts, shares one Housing Assistant position with the Humanities House. This creates an untenable scenario in which an applicant for the Humanities House could, however well-intentioned, preside over the residents of Rosa Parks without the necessary training, background or prior interest in the historic mission of the House. The Rosa Parks House is the only residence hall on campus with an explicit commitment to the welfare of Black students and requires a staff with focused attention and preparation.

2d) WE DEMAND that the UCI administration support the promotion of the Program in African American Studies to departmental status. As the only consistent source of scholarship at UCI about the history, culture and politics of African-derived peoples, African American Studies’ stability and growth must be ensured. The budget cuts that have plagued the Program in African American Studies in recent years are another means through which the UCI administration has allowed anti-Blackness to fester. The award-winning, internationally recognized research and teaching carried out by the faculty of African American Studies are essential to the fight against anti-Blackness. A robust Department of African American Studies would help bolster enrollments for Black undergraduate and graduate students as well.

Black Leaders on Campus (BLOC) consists of the following organizations:
100 Black Women
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Black Educated Men (B.E. Men)
Black Law Society (BLS)
Black Queer Collective (BQC)
Black Student Union (BSU)
Christ Our Redeemer (COR)
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
El Si Rosa Parks House
Ethiopian Student Association (ESA)
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
Minority Association of Pre-Health Students (MAPS)
National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
Nigerian Student Association (NSA)
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
Umoja NewsMagazine

Treat Protests as "Teachable Moments"! Sixty-two UCI Faculty Urge Chancellor Drake to Tell DA to Drop Criminal Charges

Non-violent and loud sit-in outside UCI Chancellor's Office 24 February 2010. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

Sixty-two UC Irvine faculty members earlier today urged UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and the Chair of the Academic Senate, Prof. Alan Barbour, to publicly ask Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas "to drop the criminal charges" against the UCI students involved in the "civil disobedience" outside the Drake's Office on February 24 last year, suggesting that "political action" can better be regulated by campus rather than "external" authorities.

The signatories to the three-page letter, dated today and delivered this morning to the Chancellor's office, notably include four Department Heads: Jared Sexton, Chair of African American Studies, Jennifer Terry, Chair of Women's Studies, Susan Jarratt, Chair of Comparative Literature, and Jim Lee, Chair of Asian American Studies. It also includes two Distinguished Professors, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, of English and Comparative Literature, and Etienne Balibar, of Humanities, French and Italian, and Comparative Literature. One-third of the signatories are Full Professors, the rest mainly Associate Professors.

"We ask that the university return to an environment engaged in teaching and learning. Student activism and campus debate should be treated as teachable moments, lead to open discussions about the meaning of civil disobedience, the history of social movements, and the wide variety of political discourse within our community," the letter urges the Chancellor.

It concludes: "These and other actions can affirm the mission of the university as one of teaching, learning, supporting a wide range of ideas, opinions, and political actions."

There were actually altogether 19 defendants in the case, not all of whom are UCI students, with many active in the UCI Worker-Student Alliance on campus. The protest outside the Chancellor's office had focused on poor labor conditions facing outsourced workers at UCI.

Today's letter comes in the wake of another, signed by 100 UCI faculty members, urging the Orange County District Attorney to drop criminal charges against the 11 Muslim students involved in protesting the talk given last year on campus by the Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren. That letter was heavily promoted by the UCI Communications Office and posted on the UCI web site as a featured story.

UCI Police begin the arrests of the protesters outside the Chancellor's Office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 24 February 2010.

The Full Text of the Letter and Signatories Follow:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Dear Chancellor Michael Drake:

CC: Michael R. Gottfredson, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
Dr. Rameen Talesh, Dean of Students and Assistant Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
Edgar Dormitorio, Director, Student Conduct and Assistant Dean of Students
Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D., Interim Vice Chancellor Student Affairs
Alan Barbour, PhD., Chair, Academic Senate

We write to express our concern about the current campus climate regarding student activism, political debate, and social action.

We have been dismayed to learn that the Orange County District Attorney has criminally charged students who engaged in an organized act of civil disobedience on February 24, 2010 outside of the Chancellor’s office in Aldrich Hall. Taking a cue from a long history of activism on University of California campuses, the student coalition had organized a protest to call attention to a variety of pertinent issues on our campus including tuition and fee increases and a hostile environment for students of color. While two students barricaded doors and engaged in other actions that we may not support, political action on campus should be regulated by the university and not external authorities.

Under the purview of the Student Conduct Director of the Office of the Dean of Students, students were placed on academic probation for a year, required to complete 30 hours of community service, a five-page reflection paper on community service hours, and a ten-page paper on the First Amendment. It is our understanding that students have completed or are in the process of completing this punishment set by the university.

On December 9, 2010, these UCI students were charged by the Orange County District Attorney for disorderly conduct. It is our position that this criminal prosecution is incommensurate with the student actions: There was no bodily harm and no property destruction of any kind. The UCI police, not the protesting students, called for an evacuation of Aldrich Hall. Unlike similar incidents, the student protestors were arrested without the usual intervention of the Student Conduct unit. Lastly, it is striking that the criminal charges were filed ten months following the event, two months before the statute of limitation, and on the last day of the quarter.

• We ask that the university explain its role in the Orange County District Attorney proceeding with criminal charges when usually these acts of student civil disobedience have been handled internally.
• We ask that the Chancellor and the Chair of the Academic Senate issue a public statement asking the Orange County District Attorney to drop the criminal charges.
• We ask that the university return to an environment engaged in teaching and learning. Student activism and campus debate should be treated as teachable moments, lead to open discussions about the meaning of civil disobedience, the history of social movements, and the wide variety of political discourse within our community.

These and other actions can affirm the mission of the university as one of teaching, learning, and supporting a wide range of ideas, opinions, and political actions.

Sincerely,

Jean-Daniel Saphores, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Paul Dourish, Professor, Informatics
Jared Sexton, Associate Professor & Chair, African American Studies
Scott Bollens, Professor, Endowed Professor in Peace and Intl Cooperation
Francesca Polletta, Professor, Sociology
Lilith Mahmud, Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
Mike Burton, Emeritus Professor, Anthropology
Jennifer Terry, Associate Professor and Chair, Women's Studies
Catherine Liu, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Assistant Professor, African American Studies
Catherine L. Benamou, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies
Frank Cancian, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
Rodrigo Lazo, Associate Professor, Department of English
Heidi Tinsman, Associate Professor, History
Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies and Sociology
Annette Schlichter, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Eyal Amiran, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and FMS
Jessica Millward, Assistant Professor, History
Etienne Balibar, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, French and Italian,
Comparative Literature
Victoria Bernal, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Tom Boellstorff, Professor, Anthropology
Jeanne Scheper, Assistant Professor, Women's Studies
Ellen S. Burt, Professor, French and Comparative Literature
Roxanne Varzi, Associate Professor, Anthropology and Film
Keith M. Murphy, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Robert Garfias, Professor, Anthropology
Julia Elyachar, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Kris Peterson, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Steven Topik, Professor, History
Michael Montoya, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Chicano and Latino Studies,
Public Health, Nursing Science
Elizabeth M. Guthrie, Senior Lecturer, SOE (Retired), French
Claire Jean Kim, Associate Professor, Political Science and Asian American Studies
David A. Smith, Professor, Sociology
Luis F. Aviles, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Cecelia Lynch, Professor, Political Science
Elizabeth Allen, Associate Professor, English
Daniel M. Gross, Associate Professor and Director of Composition, English
Rebecca Davis, Assistant Professor, English
Deborah Vargas, Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies
Santiago Morales, Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Distinguished Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Carolyn Boyd, Professor Emeritus, History
Susan Jarratt, Professor and Chair, Comparative Literature
Karen Leonard, Professor, Anthropology
Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Irene Tucker, Associate Professor, English
Adriana Johnson, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Ivette N. Hernandez-Torres, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Charles Chubb, Professor, Cognitive Sciences
James Fujii, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Literatures
Dina al-Kassim, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Professor Emeritus, Chicano Latino Studies
Jon Wiener, Professor, History
Kavita Philip, Associate Professor, Women's Studies
Frank B. Wilderson, III, Associate Professor, Director, Humanities & the Arts,
Drama & African American Studies
Alice Fahs, Associate Professor, History
Lynn Mally, Professor, History
Raul Fernandez, Professor, Chicano Latino Studies/Social Sciences
Laura J. Mitchell, Associate Professor and Vice Chair, History
Arlene R. Keizer, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies,
Director, PhD Program in Culture and Theory
Jim Lee, Chair, Asian American Studies
Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Assistant Professor, History

UCI Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez on the First Amendment

Manuel Gomez in his plush office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010. UPDATED: To listen to audio, click here: .

Irvine -- In a broad look back at his student activism days (when he hung the Black Flag of anarchism in his apartment), UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, in the wake of growing controversy over the student disruption of the talk earlier this month of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and the arrests of 12 students, discusses the First Amendment on campus, and states that UCI's Muslim Student Union will not be kicked off campus. He also states that images on student protest blogs of UCI Police taking down leaflets announcing protest events is "disturbing," but he is waiting for students to file formal complaints with his office.

Gomez says he grew up in a poverty-stricken "barrio" in Santa Ana and was active in various struggles in his student days, including fighting police abuse. He says he understands the passion and quest among young people for opposing oppression: "I understand it in my bone." His verdict on his protesting past: It was wrong to distrust people over 30. We also discuss cooptation.

In "Imagining the Future: Cultivating Civility in a Field of Discontent," Gomez focuses on the situation at UCI as tensions were addressed in the wake of the Zionist Organization of America's initial complaint to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights over the alleged mistreatment of Jewish students. ZOA has since also claimed UCI students solicited donations for Hamas during a talk at UCI of British Member of Parliament George Galloway.

In the article, written for Change Magazine, as well as on Subversity, Gomez argues that hate speech has been upheld by the courts as allowed under the First Amendment. The ZOA more recently has called for a boycott of UCI in terms of donations and enrollment.

UCI has also sent disciplinary letters to the 8 UCI students arrested, including MSU President Mohamed Abdelgany, a first step in campus administrative proceedings.

In response, the various Muslim activist groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have called on UCI allow "free speech" for protesters.

Gomez's interview is being aired this morning on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, at 9 am (simulcast via kuci.org). He is interviewed by Subversity host Daniel C. Tsang.

UCI Chancellor Drake Grilled by Students

Chancellor Drake listens as the spouse of an outsourced worker asks in Spanish to be treated with dignity, captivating the audience. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

UPDATED with audio link: To listen to the show, click here: .

Irvine -- UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, for the first time since a critical UCI Faculty Senate blasted him for (initially) firing founding Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in 2007, faced Wednesday 13 January 2010 another hostile audience at a public forum organized by student protesters who gave what OC Register's Gary Robbins called a "verbal drubbing" -- with all but one student criticizing his leadership of the campus. It was a P.R. disaster for Drake.

Unlike previous "town hall" meetings where Drake managed to be in control, students criticized him for deferring to aides and not answering the questions "man to man". Asked pointedly if he would still continue to stay at UCI should his pay be further cut, he never answered the question, nor did he made a commitment to remaining at UCI.

While Drake and UCI police chief Paul Henisey declined to comment on the police abuse at UCLA protests (saying they were not there to see what happened) -- after the public forum, Subversity managed to ask the police chief if he would drop charges against sociology graduate student John Bruning, who had been arrested at a protest late last fall. Chief Henisey said it was up to the Orange County District Attorney.

At the forum, students laughed when Drake declared that UCI's commitment to free speech was nationally known. The chief then denied his cops were ripping down protesters' posters on campus. Both Drake and Henisey said they knew nothing about that. See photos of a UCI police officer ripping down posters on the Occupy UCI! blog.

Subversity has also learned that in another sign of intimidation by campus police, protesters who have been chalking on campus recently -- writing statements such as "UCI is Racist" on walls and the ground -- have been confronted by campus police who take down their name and threaten to charge them with "defacing" university property should the chalk not be able to be removed. This week's rains are likely, however, to wipe away the chalk.

The only time Drake seemed moved and did not act like a CEO of a corporation was after the wife of an outsourced worker who has worked at UCI for 20 years pleaded with him to provide benefits to the workers. Drake responded that he was committed to "quality experience" for everyone at UCI and said he had been working to help the disadvantaged and dispossessed in his career.

A day after the forum, dozens of outsourced workers demonstrated on campus and a smaller group of workers and student supporters gave Ramona Agrela, an associate to Drake, posters of workers who had been laid off.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airs today (18 January 2010) at 9-10 a.m. audio from the public forum as a public service. The program airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Students & Workers to Confront Chancellor at Public Forum

UCI protest rally organizer Dennis Lopez, 4 January 2010. Photo credit: Daniel C. Tsang © 2010.

A public forum with students and workers confronting UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake on the privatization of the UCs is slated for Wednesday 12 January 2010 at 5-6 p.m. at HIB (Humanities Instructional Bldg) 100 on the UC Irvine campus.

High on the student agenda, beyond calling for a reduction in fees and end to privatizing a UC education, is expected to be calls for Drake to control the UCI police, to ban the use of Tasers on campus and to drop charges against Sociology graduate student John Bruning. Some students even want UCI to be made a cop-free zone.

If UCI police meant to silence Bruning, a student protest leader, by arresting him late last year on dubious grounds, it has done the opposite. Bruning in an article in today's New University calls for a ban on Tasers on campus, citing a recent court decision criticizing its use.

Though he is not happy under the spotlight as a student leader whose arrest and his being dragged off by UCI police was captured on video and posted on YouTube, Bruning is likely to use his trial -- if it comes to that -- as a platform to further critique UCI's administration and police tactics. Does UCI really want to provide him such a platform? After all, UC Berkeley dropped all charges against those originally arrested outside the Berkeley Chancellor's home, after windows were broken. At UCI, Bruning is not even charged with breaking windows, just slamming his arm against a glass-paned door to the administration building. I suspect the Orange County District Attorney's office will find there are no grounds to proceed to trial.

Meanwhile unnamed individuals have been posting on campus WANTED posters of Drake and Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, charging them with neglecting student needs among other undocumented allegations. The reward: Their salaries, the amounts of which are emblazoned at the bottom of the posters, which stayed up only hours before being removed by also unnamed individuals.

These and other WANTED posters remain online, on the so-called Communist Party Planning Committee site, targeting, in addition to Drake and Gomez, Sharon Salinger (Dean of Undergraduate Education), Assoc. Dean Caesar Sereses, Police chief Paul Henisey, officer Charles Chon, new Dean of Students Assistant Vice Chancellor Rameen Talesh, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Gottfredson. The CP Planning Committee is likely a parody of the name and the WANTED posters a provocative escalation of tactics.

The fact that these wanted posters with salary numbers haven't been widely posted on campus perhaps suggests a hesitancy among the protesters, who are by no means a unified whole. We link them here to inform the public.

As for the targets, just to mention two more: Salinger is the UCI administrator who wiped out a key student services resource, SAAS, the Student Academic Advancement Services, and subsequently asserted on KUCI's Subversity show that the services, which were partially refunded by the U.S. Department of Education, would continue under another name, although the former SAAS director and staff were let go.

Talesh in a letter in today's New University, while declaring UCI's commitment to protect free speech rights, argues there is a "time and place" for student protests, but not when they disrupt classes.

The text of the student/worker endorsed statement, distributed via email originally yesterday, follows:

Dear Campus Community:

In the past 3 months, we've seen changes and decisions made at the UC system that many of us wouldn't have dreamed of. Undergraduate fees have risen 32%, faculty, staff, and campus workers have been laid off and furloughed, classes have been cut, and the library hours have been reduced. To add insult to injury, essential services on campus have also been terminated, such as Student Academic Advancement Services (which ran Summer Bridge), Counseling Center staff has been cut, and financial aid has been decreasing. We all have questions about our futures in the UC system: How will the cuts affect us? How will we continue to afford UCI? What job prospects will we have after we graduate?

In response to the growing discontent and anger over the budget cuts on campuses across the state, a broad coalition of students has organized a Public Forum at UCI to discuss the important changes affecting our university. Chancellor Drake has been invited to attend and participate, which he has agreed to do, along with other key administrators at UCI. We urge all of the UCI community -- students, workers, faculty, staff -- to attend and raise questions about the decisions being made on our behalf for the future of the University of California and public education more generally.

Sponsored by:
Black Student Union
American Indian Student Association
Asian Pacific Student Association
MEChA
Alyansa ng mga Kababayan
Radical Student Union
Worker Student Alliance
Muslim Student Union
Women and Criminal Justice Network
Incite Magazine
Defend UCI
University Council-AFT, Local 2226
AFSCME, Local 3299
UPTE
Alud, The Graduate Student Journal of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese

Win for all: Library to open 24 hours

Irvine -- In a victory for common sense, UCI will keep a large campus library open 24 hours starting this coming Friday (4 December) through the end of Finals (the subsequent Friday at 5 p.m.). See library announcement.

Faced with the prospect of student protesters staging a "study-in" after the original 5 p.m. closure Friday at what the protesters have renamed the Langston Hughes Library, wise heads prevailed and the University found the money to keep the library open.

Some faculty members have been invited to participate in the teach-in announced earlier. According to the protesters' posters, teach-in activities begin outside Langson Library at 3 p.m. on Friday, 4 December.

The prospect of police intervening if the library were occupied after hours must have spurred the University to find the funds to keep the library open. After all, keeping the library open 24 hours costs less than paying overtime to police decked out in riot gear.

And UCI protesters have this reaction to the library staying open during exam week and the weekend before: "Direct action gets the goods!" See more of the protesters' reaction here.

Naming Opportunities

Posters from protesters' site

Irvine -- When UCI opened in 1965, its main library was named, appropriately enough, Main Library. It was not until 2003 when a Newport-Beach real estate entrepreneur, Jack Langson, gave $5 million to the University of California that it got renamed, of course, after himself, as Jack Langson Library.

The library got itself a needed facelift, new carpeting and more PCs for students to use and comfortable, colorful sofas for them to sit in, and for some to sleep on.

Talking about naming opportunities, Lang Son is of course, the name of a northern province in Vietnam, next to China, so colleagues there often laugh when I say I am from Langson Library.

Fast forward to late November 2009, right after the UC Regents hike "fees" (they can't call it tuition according to the California Higher Education Master Plan) an outrageous 32%. UCI students protesting the fee hikes now plan a "study-in" at Langson Library Friday December 4, 2009, after 5 p.m. closing hours, calling it a form of resistance to the fee hikes. In "liberating Langson," "students, faculty and workers" have also taken the opportunity to rename it, rather creatively one might say, "Langston Hughes Library," after the gay Harlem Renaissance poet and literary master.

Their Facebook page on "liberating" the library already has over a 1,000 listed as potentially attending the study-in.

Their manifesto, addressed to UCI's librarians and library staff, declares:

"As students, we believe we should have full access to books, computers,
and library materials before and during Finals Week. We also know that
the funds exist within the UC system to maintain a fully-staffed,
adequately paid 24 hour library on campus. Close to 8 billion dollars of
discretionary funding is sitting untouched, and the UC has taken out
over 6 billion dollars in construction bonds. This money comes from our
tuition and our and our parents’ taxes, and we want a piece of it.
Similarly, we are disgusted by the University’s negotiation process,
offering library staff representatives the “choice” of layoffs or pay
cuts; we want neither!"

The unionized librarians accepted the University's pay cut/furlough plan, but library assistants (in the Coalition of University Employees) will be undergoing 11 rotating layoff days next summer.

The study-in organizers explain:

"In taking over the library and keeping it open overnight Friday and
perhaps indefinitely thereafter, we are exerting our agency as students
and members of the UC community. We do not expect anything of you beyond
your normal work requirements, and despite administrative claims to the
contrary, we are not asking you to stay beyond your regular work hours.
We only ask of you, and of the University, that we retain access to
automated check-out machines, computer labs, and other basic unstaffed
resources. We additionally condemn any attempts by the administration to
shut off power or Internet access or lock the main doors.

"Our only barricades will be our bodies so long as authorities respond
peacefully to us, and it is our intent to leave the library cleaner than
how we found it. We intend to use the space for teach-ins about the
budget crisis, exam review sessions, study groups, and quiet study. On
Saturday at 1pm, we will be holding a General Assembly for the UCI
community to assess our ability to remain in Langson Library and
consider our capacity for further action. Should you or your coworkers
voluntarily choose to stay in the library for any period of time in
order to assist us in any way, you have our humble appreciation."

The manifesto goes on to make some grand statement of solidarity with past instances of direct action:

"This action is being carried out in solidarity with 15 prior occupations
in the UC and CSU systems this quarter, and with the occupations
throughout the world, most recently in Croatia, Serbia, Germany,
Austria, Italy, and Great Britain. While this may be the first attempted
occupation at UCI, it will not be the last. We will occupy the entire
campus, building by building, until everything that has been taken from
us is ours again.

It ends with a rallying cry: "LONG LIVE THE OCCUPATIONS!"

The planned occupiers say this: "We are an autonomous body in Orange County attempting to subvert hegemonic, state-supporting/ed protest by promoting radical discourse and militant action."

Of course, occupations have a mixed record in the UC recently, without the students necessarily achieving all their demands, although undoubtedly they became radicalized by the them. At UCLA, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz this past week, student occupiers of buildings on those campuses were forced to vacate them at risk of being arrested for "tresspassing." At Berkeley, over 40 were arrested.

Study-ins, however, have been successfully held at libraries in other UCs. One at Berkeley's Anthropology Library "led administrators to allocate funds from unrestricted donations" to keep that and similar specialized libraries on campus open. In addition, "student activism around the finals week closure brought about an awareness of the issue that led to a private donation to keep the libraries open during finals week" ("UC Libraries Face cuts, But Faculty and Student Activism Pays Off," UC-AFT Perspective, Fall 2009, p.9.)



Prospects for a peaceful resolution at UCI are as yet unknown. Will the University welcome students to stay for the duration of the study-in?

I like Langston Hughes, but given that Lang Son was where noted General Võ Nguyên Giáp defeated the French colonial forces there in 1950 in one of the first successes of the First Indochina War, facilitating military aid from China across the border, perhaps the students could have just added a blank space and renamed it Lang Son Library as well.

UCI Students Protest Fee Hikes

Dennis Lopez & Hadeer Soliman at KUCI. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2009

UCI Students Fight Back Against Fee Increases

Updated with audio link: To listen to our interview with Dennis Lopez and Hadeer Soliman, click here: .

Irvine - UCI students, faculty and staff gear up for a huge noon rally
Tuesday (24 November 2009) at the UCI flagpole.
The rally, sponsored by a host of student groups,
comes in the wake of Regental action the
past Thursday to raise student fees a third for the coming year,
starting Spring Quarter.

On the 23 November 2009 edition of Subversity, we talked with Dennis Lopez of UCI's Worker-Student Alliance
and Muslim Student Association member Hadeer Soliman.

According to the rally Facebook page.

"The UC has voted to raise tuition by 32%! Students were brutally
assaulted at UCLA for using their right of freedom of speech! Cuts are
coming from the bottom not the top, while the administrators are
getting raises workers are getting fired and student class sizes get
larger. It is time that we as students come together in solidarity to
tell the UC it's our UC!!!"

and

"Come out and hear stories from those affected and find out what we
can do from here! Please invite at least 10 others. This is our time
in history will we live up to the responsibility?

and

"We stress that this is a peaceful rally, however, we as citizens of
the United States can and will exercise of First amendment Rights of
free speech!"
________

Calling "even studying is now a form of resistance," the organizers
also plan a teach-in outside Langson Library Friday December 4 at 3
p.m. followed by a "study-in" in the library at 4 p.m., followed by an
"all-night" teach-in at 5 p.m., past closing hours. On the next day, a
Saturday, a "general assembly" is slated for the Graduate Reading Room
in the library at 1 p.m.

For details see another Facebook page.

Historic Protest at UC Irvine

Video clip from OC Register.

Updated 3:15 PM 10/05/09: To listen to the 5 October 2009 Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- In our 5 October 2009 edition, KUCI's Subversity program looks back at the historic walkout rally and teach-ins at UCI on September 24, 2009, with Dennis Lopez and Raul Perez, from the Worker-Student Alliance at UC Irvine. We'll also play audio from the day's noon rally that drew hundreds in a show of unity among workers, students, faculty and staff.

Dennis Lopez, a graduate student in English, and Raul Perez, a graduate student in Sociology, have been major forces in bringing students and workers together to fight for in-sourcing and for social justice, and Lopez has been a guest on Subversity before.

The show airs 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM and is simulcast via kuci.org.
Resources:

Facebook page for WSA.

WSA Web site

New University coverage of rally

Student Newspapers' interview with
UC President Yudoff

Activism -- UCI's Disorientation Week: First Disorientation Guide Debuts!; UPTE set to strike Thursday, 24 September! Faculty Plan Teach-ins

UPDATED 9/21/09 with audio link: To listen to the show, click here: .

Irvine -- As incoming UC Irvine students converge on campus this week as part of Orientation Week, they will encounter a UCI in turmoil Not only will their fees increase, UCI's faculty and staff are undergoing paycuts, furloughs and in some cases layoffs. Opposing the increasing privatization of the university are local activist groups who will be out in force this week, which starts off with an Anteater Involvement Fair on campus. And on Thursday, faculty plan walkouts and teach-ins, while the UPTE union stages a strike.

UCI's Radical Student Union is premiering a historic first, UCI's Disorientation Guide, aimed at uncovering what is not widely known about the institution, and seeking to provoke students and other readers into action. In its introduction, its anonymous authors state: "Between these covers, you have a guide into the belly of the University. Use it wisely. But don’t let this be your only map of this place, add your own experiences into the mix." It adds, cryptically: "Just remember what you don’t see is probably more interesting and important than what you do."

In the show's first half hour, we talk with members of the Disorientation Guide collective, about why they put out this first Disorientation Guide.

John Bruning is a second-year graduate student in Sociology, and a member of the Radical Student Union and the Disorientation Guide collective. John was first exposed to radical ideas after receiving a Disorientation Guide during Welcome Week as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, and got involved in campus activism shortly thereafter.

Tim Brown is a second year grad student, studying the art of sound design. He previously lived in Oregon and and sought out the RSU after being immersed for too long in the terribleness that is the home territory of the New Majority.

The paper version of the Disorientation Guide will be distributed at the Radical Student Union table at the Anteater Involvement Fair on Monday, 21 September at UCI, and throughout the week on Ring Road. KUCI is cited in the first Guide as a "voice of freedom" while Subversity is mentioned as follows: "It's like Disorientation on the radio!"

See also other campus disorientation guides: UC Santa Cruz | UC Berkeley | NYU.

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Moore on Subversity. © Daniel C. Tsang 2009

In our second hour, we talk with a union leader from UPTE, which will be on strike on September 24 university-wide, to call attention to the misplaced priorities of the current central administration, where administrative salaries have headed skyward even as the university claims it is in a budget crisis.

Michael Moore is UPTE's Leadership Development Coordinator for the past four years.
Active in the labor movement for 14 years, he has worked for various unions throughout the U.S., organizing and representing a cross section or workers. Originally from Georgia, he was mentored by Hose Williams, one of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.'s organizers. His grandmother was one of the first presidents of the Newtown Florist Club, an environmental organization in his home town of Gainesville, Georgia.

The show airs Monday 21 September 2009 on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast via kuci.org.

For more on the hidden wealth within the UC's corporate structure, see UC Berkeley Prof. Emeritus Charlie Schwartz's latest analysis, posted at: UniversityProbe.org.

His analysis jibes with that of economist Peter Donohue, who last week held public sessions at UCI providing analysis with documentation on UC's hidden wealth. If the UC were really in an economic crisis, why would bond agencies increase UC's rating? Financial reports submitted by UC show clearly that millions are stashed away in the University's accounts, and are not legally restricted despite what the administration claims. The funds may be "committed" to some projects in some budget projections, but they are not legally restricted. See Donohue's earlier report

September 24, the first day of classes at UC Irvine, is also a day when faculty across the UCs plan to hold "walkouts" and teach-ins about the future of UC education. For more information, including flyers for a noon event at UCI's flagpole, see: Defend UCI.

See also: Remaking the University

And on Monday, 21 September, students protesting the closure of SAAS, which served first-generation, disabled and low-income students, plan to hold the first of two consecutive days of SAAS LOVE events at UCI, starting at 11 a.m. on Monday. See: Facebook page, SAAS Love.

Subversity Exclusive: UCI Undergraduate Dean Sharon Salinger on SAAS Closure

Photo © 2009 Daniel C. Tsang


On the 14 September 2009 Subversity Show, at 9 am on KUCI, 88.9 fm and simulcast via http://kuci.org, we air our exclusive interview with Sharon V. Salinger, Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of California. Under fire for closing an important unit on campus, SAAS (Student Academic Advancement Services), which served first-generation, low-income and disabled students, Salinger says it was budget cuts that led to the closure and layoffs of five staff members, including the SAAS director. The U.S. Department of Education recently renewed funding to UCI for the same services provided to SAAS, which closed August 31, 2009. A faculty member, with two academic advisors, will constitute the new team. The new federal grant provides more student financial aid as well as additional funding for student advisors. Salinger is hoping former SAAS student peer advisors will continue to work in the new restructured unit. Salinger is interviewed by show host Daniel C. Tsang.

SAAS supporters, meanwhile, have organized a "SAAS Love" sit-in slated for Monday 21 September 2009 and the next day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. outside the old SAAS offices. Salinger says she may bring pizza. A facebook event page has been set up: SAAS Love. The original Save SAAS at UCI Now! Facebook page continues. A video from SAAS supporters is posted here: video. OC Weekly recently covered the SAAS closure: Navel Gazing blog