amateur ramblings

Following the occupation of Wheeler Hall on Friday November 20, former Student Action Senator Tara Raffi penned a regrettable op-ed decrying the protest and its participants. I know Raffi, who has always been kind and respectful towards me, but her demeanor cannot save her claims from criticism or scrutiny.

Unfortunately Raffi’s column appears to misapprehend crucial facts both about the strikes and the situation facing the university. For one, Raffi draws an offensive and elitist image of the protesters. Second, she imputes onto the strikers a simplicity and ignorance that is simply dishonest given all that has been discussed at campus teach-in’s and in various fora that allow for more elaboration than a protest placard or chant. Third, she takes for granted that University administrators are acting in students’ interests (as if students cannot decide for themselves their own interests) and lets them off the hook when they should actually be spending every conscious moment lobbying on behalf of students.

Striking a condescending and derisive tone, Raffi calls student strikers victims of a “mob-mentality” that is “fueled by ignorance.” Where students of various social and economic backgrounds have finally come together to confront a tangible threat to their social and economic mobility, to their access to an education–all very rational and logical needs and demands–Raffi sees only mobs powered by an “illogical sense of entitlement.” Fear of the mob is a phobia that comes from a very particular social status, but that Raffi should feel it towards fellow students, many of whom I know she knows personally, is somewhat mind-boggling. Her words echo the classic elitist tropes invoked by the Haves criticizing demands and tactics of the Have-Nots. In that regard she makes no substantive point, saying little more than: “odd how the common folk behave wildly when we take away their schooling!” Part of me wants to believe that the only thing that could have made the column worse if she had simply come out and said: let them eat cake!

But, offensive insults aside, her claim that students are acting with an “illogical sense of entitlement” is especially peculiar. One wonders why having a sense of “entitlement” is regrettable or illogical in this context, since entitlement is the very foundation of public schooling. If the idea is not that all California residents, regardless of economic background, should have access to a higher education, then what is the purpose of a publicly funded university in the first place? If a public university is not the place for those who cannot afford a private education, then what is the place for them, and without them, why should a public university exist at all? For Raffi, the idea of a group protest chant is as repulsive as the idea that all California residents (not only the rich and powerful) should have access to a higher education. One might cite the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education as historical precedent for this “illogical sense of entitlement,” but precedent is not necessary to justify this sensible demand. It’s easy: the university should belong to the public, not to money and power.

That flawed perspective may explain why Raffi tries to throw the mob a bone by writing, “I know fee increases make it difficult for students to attend Berkeley-this  makes me sad and angry.” It should say a lot about this column that fee hikes cause Raffi sadness and anger rather than fear for her future. Fee hikes are not simply matters to be bemoaned on a policy level, they create tremendous barriers for students who can no longer attend a school that is supposed to serve the public. They don’t simply make life “difficult for students,” they also mean that some people can no longer be students. In these bleak circumstances, Raffi’s pity and sympathy mean next to nothing. Why should students accept or be expected to accept administrators’ remorse or regret as those same administrators walk them and their futures to the gallows? For Raffi to pretend that, if she were in the same situation as the strikers, she would not protest, is either naive or disingenuous. For her to claim that fee hikes are a necessary evil not only overlooks their real impact on current and prospective students and their families but also contradicts research by people like Bob Meister and Wendy Brown.

Finally, Raffi invokes a particularly meritless but popular myth: that Chancellor Birgeneau and President Mark Yudof are helpless in this situation and have no other options but to raise fees. If these two individuals have no imagination that can be of use to the student body, then they must go. When did students endorse these two individuals to represent them, or to work on their behalf, anyway? It’s to students themselves, not to the Chancellor, to decide what is best for themselves.

While Raffi’s tone is offensive and regrettable, her intuition that directing demands exclusively on the Chancellor and Yudof may not be enough is probably correct–but strikers never disagreed with her on that point. There is no question that the student movement now shaking the University of California system must burst off-campus and shake the foundations of California society at large. But as that happens, passivity on the part of Yudof and other administrators is not acceptable. Unfortunately Raffi sees only two fine administrators tortured by their difficult circumstances, rather than the slow death of the public university and public education. Yudof and Birgeneau are not the only people that must be held accountable for what is happening to the university, but their stunning failure in leadership, and their facilitation of this slow death, cannot protect them from student ire. If daily occupations can make life miserable enough for the Chancellor and UCOP that they re-locate to Sacramento until government trends are reversed, then, by all means–occupy everything!