Friday, July 4

Glamorous facade belies activist history


Tuesday, September 30, 1997

Glamorous facade belies activist history

WELCOME: Students at UCLA have opportunity, potential to affect
change

By Stacy Hae Lim Lee

So you just moved into your dorm, and you’re hanging up posters
and pictures and arranging your desk just the way you like it.
Maybe then it will feel more like home. You have a box of free
stuff – replete with all the "necessities" that are quite
disposable for our convenience – on the desk (also available in
Ackerman) supplied by all the companies that are wooing the mighty
dollars away from students’ overflowing pockets (I’m being
sarcastic). After looking through that box, you twiddle your thumbs
a bit and ponder what to do next. On a normal day back at home, it
wouldn’t be a struggle to figure out what the next five hours of
your day will be spent doing, but today is different – it is your
entrance into your new life at UCLA.

So you thought the first day was a trial – it doesn’t stop
there. I’m not trying to frighten anyone; this is one of the most
exciting times in our lives, but all the possibilities can be as
overwhelming as they can be inviting. It’s a time for us all to
start making choices again. Majors, classes, friends, organizations
and ideas are all a part of our experience here, but the
differences lie in the choices we make. This is the time where we
have the opportunity – and the time – to start re-evaluating
ourselves and the world we live in. I remember imagining what life
in college would be like. I thought it would be a group of
students, engaging in intellectual debate about the ways of the
world and why things are the way they are. I didn’t find that place
– at least not right away.

UCLA is Hollywood. People are all beautiful and overdressed,
half of the movies ever made were filmed here, and UCLA isn’t
exactly a haven for those of us who don’t have much money. You will
see people hang out for hours on Bruin Walk, staring at all who
pass by. There are those of us who will become consumed in our
classes and never emerge from beneath the books, and their
counterparts who forget where their class is the eighth week into
the quarter.

But for those of you who are interested in having those
conversations, discovering the world and yourself, and doing
something about what you learn, you have to look beyond the glam of
this place and see it for what it really is. Although we pose as
the mecca for wannabe Barbie dolls and famous Star Trek alumni, we
are also one of the most actively organized campuses in the fight
for social justice and social change. In the 1960s, Bunche Carter
and John Huggins, both members of the Black Panther Party, were
shot in front of Campbell Hall by men who were later identified as
part of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

COINTELPRO was a program designed by the FBI to target and stop
(by any means) the leadership of the civil rights movement,
specifically Black Power.

UCLA was also home to the High Potential Program, which is what
the Academic Advancement Program (AAP) came from, where at-risk
youth who had shown leadership skills were given a chance to go to
college. These young people often became leaders on campus and
continued that program until it was watered down by university
administration. When the Gulf War erupted, the UCLA campus was shut
down by masses of students, angry with the selfish concerns of the
U.S. government and concerned with the rights of the people in the
Middle East who were subjected to the most advanced military forces
in the world. During the time when Propositions 184 (the three
strikes law), 187 (the anti-immigrant law) and 209 (the
anti-affirmative action law) came around, UCLA students were there
to challenge the oppressive policies of people who have more power
and money than some of us could comprehend.

That, being just a brief history of the concern of students at
UCLA, shows the potential power we hold. None of these things came
about out of chance but out of a concerned effort to understand our
world and how to change it. That understanding of our world does
not come from these institutions of "education" but rather from our
challenges and questions of how these structures operate and deal
or don’t deal with people. Most of us aren’t even aware of how or
why all of these things happen, but that’s OK. As long as we are
willing to learn and question and do something about our new
understandings, things will change.


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