Tuesday, November 17, 1998
Privatizing stifles social justice
CORPORATIONS: Increasing dependence on sponsors leads to class
segregation
Last year, when the new BruinCard system was being instituted, I
was angry and anxious about the coming change. I was being forced
to submit to a corporate-sponsored re-tooling of the social
environment. The UCLA bureaucrats had seen fit to mark our IDs with
a corporate logo; we now carried the insignias of our newly adopted
clan in our purses and wallets.
Words like "big brother" and "mark of the beast" flashed in my
mind as I contemplated the darker ramifications of such direct
corporate influence on a public institution. But the card is only a
symptom of a greater malignancy. UCLA has become a testing ground
on which corporations can experiment with social architecture. We
are guinea pigs in an experiment to test out the viability of a
totally corporate environment.
UCLA is taking the final step toward its conversion to a private
space.
At its heart, this conversion represents the division between
people. If you examine Southern California, you will notice that an
incredible disparity of wealth among people already exists. For
instance, verdant hills and posh, gated communities surround UCLA.
Yet, one need only drive 15 minutes east into Hollywood to see a
completely different social landscape.
Rampant homelessness mars the sidewalks like infected sores on a
leper’s body. Throngs of working-class people jam the streets and
buses. A large police presence, resembling a military occupation,
patrols these less affluent areas. Equipped with weapons, the
police function as a calculated imposition of social order in an
area that has a history of unrest and dissidence. When armed agents
of the established social order are everywhere, the poor think
twice about rebellion.
In a landscape where the poor are minutes away from the rich,
the police force is an effective buffer between the areas of
poverty and affluence.
With this division in place, the elite class is left alone to
withdraw into gated havens and clean marketplaces – and they
thereby create a separate social space: a private commune of the
wealthy and powerful that is self-contained and deliberately
detached from the surrounding public space.
Indeed, this is a trend that is spreading, and it represents the
antithesis of the participatory, democratic society.
This withdrawal represents the final push to make an irrevocable
separation between social classes. This is the new Eden that many
people are striving to create. Unfortunately, this is also the
ideal to which UCLA aspires.
UCLA is becoming a private, corporate institution. It is
corporate in the sense that business entities, like AT&T, have
a direct connection to the functioning of the campus. This kind of
corporate influence is outrageous, but it is prevalent in America.
And yet a larger, more insidious plague underlies this corporate
conquest, for the corporate manipulation of a public institution
also entails the transformation of the institution’s social
environment. In this very place, the democratic process and public
accessibility are discarded for services and the privilege of
participation in a private environment.
Look around you. UCLA is one step away from becoming a detached,
social space. We have all the goods and services we need on or near
the campus. The economy could conceivably be altered to a cashless,
closed system in which economic exchange occurs between an
exclusive social class. Indeed, the population is predominately
composed of a select group of intellectuals and members of the
middle and upper class.
Moreover, many services are provided not by members of the
community, but by a third-party corporation.
Funds and resources are allocated toward the creation and upkeep
of these conveniences and services and not toward the general
welfare; Associated Students of UCLA is floundering in debt not for
creating a textbook-lending program but for building a shopping
mall. Key decisions by ASUCLA are not made by direct democratic
vote or a congress of elected student representatives, but by
appointed officials. Have you ever met or been contacted by
Patricia Eastman, the businesswoman who heads ASUCLA? Have you ever
felt that you had meaningful, democratic input into the decisions
made at UCLA? How many decision-makers are part of the working
class?
UCLA was chartered as a public institution. By its very nature,
it should not be self-contained and detached from the greater
public community.
In short, this process should not be occurring. It is the height
of hypocrisy and a display of flagrant discrimination.
Unfortunately, like so many other public institutions, UCLA has
become a privileged resource that is only easily accessible by a
handful of people in our society. UCLA has become a de facto
private institution.
Alarmingly, UCLA is only following a trend that is spreading
across America. Gated housing communities, private social clubs and
private schools are growing more prevalent. The spaces of
interaction between social classes are growing apart as people are
withdrawing to exclusive, private environments. Consequently, the
public space is deteriorating. Involvement and contact between
different people on a personal, community level will become
uncommon.
What of those in the poor and working classes? What will happen
to them as this transition takes place? The plight of the oppressed
classes in this new regime is troubling, and we need only to look
back upon UCLA to see it.
The poor will function as they always have in our society: as a
servant or slave class. The poor are the ones who pick up our food,
clean our bathrooms and service our daily needs. As all spaces
become private, this servant status will become more pronounced.
Equality of access and opportunity will fade away as ideals.
The demand for convenience, more goods and services, and a safe,
exclusive environment will replace these ideals. Public
institutions like UCLA will systematically exclude poor people from
any participation and involvement that does not involve a servile
position.
Poor people should be at school to learn and not to clean. The
democratic ideals of total participation and equal opportunity will
become trite ironies to be discussed by those who saw them
crumble.
If the rift between the illusion of an American democracy and
the reality of an American oligarchy is not bridged, then we can
only look forward to violence. Humanity’s yearning for freedom and
self determination is strong. The continued oppression of a large
portion of the population will eventually lead to rebellion and
riot; the bomb will replace the ballot as the means of gaining
freedom. Fires will burn and people will die if we do not create
social justice. Let us take action before the bloodshed begins. Not
even America is immune from destruction.
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© 1998 ASUCLA Communications Board[Home]