It’s taken $2,500, national scrutiny and a little outside help, but with today’s Day of Action, it looks like UCSD has finally found a cause it’s ready to plant its flag on. Oct. 7 is the hopeful sequel to last spring’s March 4 Day of Action, which made headlines as a national event to defend education and mobilized 1,000 UCSD students.
Event organizers are determined that newcomers will not forget the need to make higher education affordable. That’s the good news. Now, if only those fired up about the zeros at the end of our tuition bills could figure out what we’re actually supposed to do to help. The Facebook event page – the only publicized indication that this demonstration is even taking place – is regrettably quiet on the matter.
Of course, the student leaders that put together the Oct. 7 Day of Action deserve mad props for finding the time to organize in the middle of Week One madness. Pulling students away from recruitment and free Korean barbeque to make sure that this issue doesn’t fade into the background (cancer cluster, anyone?) is no easy task. And while we have yet to see results from Sacramento, these Days of Action provide opportunity to yell ourselves hoarse and show some outrage over the now-infamous 32-percent fee increase enacted last November.
That’s not including the chance to do some yelling in cyberspace. This year’s student-led virtual sit-in — where students logged into a program that accessed the UC Office of the President website until the server overloaded — is a worthy homage to the sit-in’s creator, visual arts professor Ricardo Dominguez. Dominguez, now facing internal inquiries after orchestrating the act of electronic disobedience last year, will have to sit this one out until the administrative dust settles. Carrying it out anyway is still a fitting tribute to a professor who is currently wrapped up in the irony of being penalized for doing the work he was hired to do.
So, congratulations on keeping the digitized dream alive, but virtual protest or not — everything leading up to this event promises a smaller turnout than last year, from the last-minute advertising to the mellowed-out student body.
Last spring, March 4 was perfectly timed. It was the culmination of weeks of moral outrage and unrest that began with one racially themed party. After three protests that put the campus in a “state of emergency” and attracted national attention, those 12 hours of rallies and speeches were the cathartic end of the most explosive two weeks UCSD has had for years.
The response was inspiring; students and teachers alike took over the school. They made fiery speeches at Price Center. They congregated at Balboa Park. All over the campus and then — as the demonstration left UCSD — all over San Diego, they declared the unfairness of budget cuts and fee increases.
One spring break later, it seemed like all was forgotten; the big question on everybody’s mind wasn’t whether Sacramento would hear our plea, it was whether we’d be able to cinch Ludacris for Sun God (if only, Drake. If only). While the cost of education is still a headline issue, without a major catalyst, it looks like this time around, few students will have much to say.
Oct. 7 has the same noble cause, but last year’s demonstrations snowballed off the momentum of the protests and the excitement of administrators finally bowing to student demands. Now, a group of student leaders has graduated, replaced by freshmen who can’t tell “Real Pain” from a stubbed toe.
Mobilizing early in the year is important to keeping the issue in everyone’s minds, but having this event two weeks into the school year doesn’t give the apathetic much reason to turn out. Instead, the stress of getting off the MATH 10A waitlist or working out the kinks in that roommate situation take precedence over fighting for affordability. Three lectures into the year, the average student won’t suffer an absence to rally when there’s seemingly nothing wrong.
Then there’re the people who don’t even know this is happening — and, by the looks of the publicity campaign, that includes most of the student body. The sole Facebook group announcing the event (with 537 currently confirmed) is a far cry from the fliers that papered the school, the graffiti that adorned stop signs and the chalk that had students literally walking on the message to speak out.
Last year, there were teach-ins explaining the purpose of the March 4 Day of Action. Fliers spelled out the need for a nationwide protest, highlighting the unprecedented prices of higher education. Teachers took time out of their day to mention the event and offer open discussion. Even if you didn’t know what the stink was about, if you so much as set foot on campus in the weeks leading up to the rally, you knew something was going down.
Now, instead of massive and widespread outreach, a message went out asking people to help flier at 6 p.m. the night before the event. Instead of blogs, announcements during class and TAs speaking out, there will be fliering at a time when the school shuts down, the off-campus kids head home and everyone who managed to avoid the dreaded 6-9 p.m. classes has better places to be.
The Facebook group itself isn’t much help. There’s a snazzy poster and an event description with a long-winded speech about the state of education today, invoking examples from Arizona to New York City.
But it’s missing some key components: an agenda, a schedule, poster suggestions, a meeting place, even a “How-To” of defending education. Various Internet resources claim that there’s supposed to be a walkout, downtown rally and march, but the group includes nary a word about times, transportation, or meeting spots. For an event where every participant is crucial, people can’t speak out when they don’t know how to find the megaphones.