STUDENT LIFE — The
occupation of
has led to over 4,000 American deaths and roughly 30,000 injuries. Hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis have died and millions are homeless. Spending on the war so
far has been over $461 billion. On Oct. 27, over 100,000 people marched
throughout the nation to protest the war in Iraq, and despite a demonstration
held in downtown San Diego, UCSD students seemed oblivious.
The campus administration is threatening to carve up the
campus into sections where the First Amendment can be practiced, yet there has
been very little student mobilization against this horrific act of autocracy.
Political activism and an overall sense of global awareness are in short supply
on campus. Is there some innate characteristic in UCSD students that leads them
into apathy?
UCSD is home to over 190 student organizations, but only 13
of them are officially categorized as “political,” and only a handful more deal
with any type of activism or social consciousness. Although some students might
be happily surprised to simply find out that 13 of these organizations exist,
the number embarrasses in comparison to other universities around the country.
Macalester College, a small university with under 2,000 undergraduate students
nestled in cozy St. Paul, Minn. has created 16 student orgs of its own that
enhance social awareness and promote radical change. Why don’t Tritons seem to
care?
A quick trip over to the UCSD Bookstore shines some light on
the issue. For sale are license plate frames that read: “UCSD — the Smart
Ones.” This is not some student-made joke but an officially licensed school
product, one that represents the
administration’s chosen image of the student body. As one of the top research
institutions in the nation and one of the most prestigious public universities,
it would be easy for UCSD to depend on its academic excellence as an excuse for
its apolitical persona. But a look to its northern neighbor UC Berkeley
undercuts any of UCSD’s lame justifications for political inaction. As little
as UCSD students want to admit it, UC Berkeley is a more celebrated university
for both academics and activism.
In the 1960s, Berkeley rode the wave of radical thought
emanating from San Francisco, and still has a prevalent activist movement
today. Founded during the ’60s — a time of immense social and political
upheaval — UCSD originally did have foundations in political dissent. The
campus should be proud of its political roots and look to its once-proud
activist community as motivation to revive its current one. UC Berkeley holds
claim to the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio’s bold speech on top of a
police car, but few are aware of UCSD’s own historical protests, including that
of George Winne, a 23-year-old graduate student who set himself on fire in the
middle of Revelle Plaza in protest of the Vietnam War.
The potential for successful activism on the UCSD campus is
evident, yet since its once-proud days of dissent, the school has focused more
on promoting its science departments. And that focus has led to less student
participation in social studies, helping cultivate today’s political lull.
In 2006, 17 percent of graduating students received a degree
in biology and 14 percent in engineering, compared to only 2 percent in
history. Unlike UC Berkeley, UCSD has surrendered its intellectual curiosity to
the social responsibility of becoming a top-notch research university, while UC
Berkeley has been able to develop its academic reputation simultaneously with
an active student body. UCSD cares more about pumping out famous doctors and
award-winning researchers than motivating its students to take an active role
in society. One of the best programs at UCSD, Thurgood Marshall College’s
Dimensions of Culture, had lost touch with its original intentions of igniting
students into global debates and action, and needed two outspoken teaching
assistants to make the school realize its fall from grace.
Meanwhile, Berkeley activists have again made national
headlines, this time with the noble exploits of the tree sitters. A group of
Berkeley students have taken up residence in an oak tree for almost a year now,
proclaiming that they will not leave the tree until the university promises to
shelve plans to uproot the tree and many others in order to renovate its football
stadium. The university has not yet legally or forcibly removed the
environmental squatters from the tree. The school’s more lenient policies
toward campus activism exemplify a more enlightened administration that UCSD
officials should try to imitate. The thought of UCSD allowing a group of
students to live in eucalyptus trees in protest of rainforest destruction is
laughable.
By suffocating students with academic pressure, UCSD leaves
its undergraduates with no choice but to attach a sink-or-swim approach to
their college experience, giving them little time to focus on anything outside
of their La Jolla bubble. Most UCSD students will argue that they have just as
much academic pressure as UC Berkeley students, and it is that brand of anxiety
that has forced the student body to use its undergraduate experience not as
four years of intellectual discovery and glossy-eyed idealism, but as a
premature departure into the real world. It is not that UC Berkeley students
can better handle stress or are better at juggling both academics and social
causes, it is just that UCSD students seem to have chosen to focus solely on
the academic opportunities at hand.
It does not hurt that UC Berkeley’s version of the A.S.
Council, the Associated Students of the University of California, actively
promotes student activism by distributing numerous grants of up to $500 for
student group events that promote global activism and community involvement.
There is no reason why UCSD can’t help promote student action by making funds more
readily available to student organizations. The UCSD A.S. Council budgets
roughly $150,000 to all student organizations regardless of political leanings
— about $10,000 less than the total budget for the Sun God festival.
One of UCSD’s most active student organizations over the
last decade, Students of Economic Justice, was forced to disband last year
partially due to lack of funds. The club had previously lobbied for, and
succeeded in getting, all campus dining halls to agree to sell only fair-trade
coffee, a global problem that the student organizers were able to bring to the
forefront of students’ political awareness. With vital student organizations
unable to stay afloat, the campus’ activist community will only continue to
deteriorate. The task of making sure these student organizations are
sufficiently funded, so they may spawn as much student action as possible, now
rests on the shoulders of UCSD administrators.
All of this is not to say that there are no activists on
campus, or that there are no student organizations working tirelessly on very
important causes. But power is in numbers, and for UCSD to be considered a
mobilized campus the student body as a whole must make a more concentrated
effort at change.
UCSD students are very intelligent and capable, and are
therefore likely aware of problems that exist in the world. They may even have
some desires to eradicate these problems. Occasionally these students will
donate a dollar or two on Library Walk to different charities, but these
donations give students a false sense of instigating real change, and only
leave them feeling better about themselves and their role in the world.
Donating to philanthropic organizations is a positive method of change, but it
is more an appeasement of personal guilt than an attempt to improve the world.
If the occasional charitable donation is the only manifestation of a student’s
desire to fix the world’s atrocities, how can UCSD ever hope to achieve its
supposed goal of encouraging students “to stand out from the crowd, to make a
difference, to create an impact on the world,” as the school’s We b site so
eloquently boasts?
Students need to realize that no matter how important their
sheltered world of Geisel Library and endless chemistry labs may seem, these
places and events are only temporary entities, and sooner or later they will
have to leave UCSD behind and enter a world that is, in fact, much more ominous
than a bad report card. Students devote so much of their time to preparing for
a successful future, but their political inaction only increases the likelihood
that their futures will be tarnished with the negative effects of indifference.
There are on-campus organizations dedicated to profound
social change, but their low turnouts and drastically poor funding are
indicators of the campus’ lack of concern. This apathy must be overcome.
Students must take the initiative and overturn UCSD’s apolitical image. Most
importantly, students need to realize that there are greater problems in the
world — and UCSD needs to facilitate a path to this vital realization.
