By Greg Hom
This is in response to “Students voice concerns at meeting
with regents” (News, May 15). I don’t find it puzzling
that only three regents, one of which was the token student regent,
met with UC student leaders to discuss issues of diversity within
the UC system.
As members of a board that has effectively orchestrated the
obvious and glaring disappearance of people of color from the
University of California, the regents have been criticized for
overstepping their bounds of political jurisdiction, for being
puppets of former Gov. Pete Wilson and for being just plain racist.
As the regents adopted SP-1 and SP-2, which banned affirmative
action in admissions and hiring, protests rang throughout
California. But as a citizen of California, and more importantly as
a student of the UC system, the board’s uneasiness to own up
to its actions doesn’t move me one bit.
Instead, the regents’ lack of accountability is quite
scary, considering the immense power that they exercise.
The regents’ most recent meeting was on the UCLA campus
near the residence halls. But this was never announced to me as a
resident of the dorms, nor as a member of the UCLA community. It is
stated in Article 9, Section 9 of the California Constitution that
meetings of the regents will be public. It seems very much against
the spirit of the law, if not the letter, that this meeting was not
better publicized.
Past actions that the regents have taken show the fascist power
at their disposal. These include the refusal to reappoint Angela
Davis, a non-tenured UCLA philosophy professor, in 1969 merely
because she was a member of the Communist party, as well as the
more recent (albeit temporary) removal of CALPIRG from the UC
system because of its activism.
These examples show the basic problem of the power structure
that exists between the general community of the UC system and the
regents. To use a fellow activist’s words, that structure is
quite comparable to colonialism. Here we have 26 members of a
governing board, and we, as students, faculty and workers have no
say in the appointments of most of them.
The regents’ interests have little to do with the
interests of students, faculty and workers. Rather, their work
centers on fiscal aspects of the university, making sure it runs
like a sleek corporation. They own everything in the UC system, but
I refuse to let them own my education, as if it were just another
commodity. The regents’ unchecked control must be
stopped.
Their fiscal interests are fundamentally at odds with the
purpose of higher learning ““ to create good citizens and to
foster the development of knowledge. At universities across the
country, certain departments that aren’t creating products or
knowledge for corporate America are being defunded (“The Kept
University,” The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2000). These
decision are made without student or faculty input and without
thought as to the loss that such eliminations create.
Furthermore, these examples indicate the crisis of democracy
that exists within our educational system, and within our society
as a whole. Why is it that less than 30 percent of undergraduates
voted in student government elections? Why is the number of people
who vote in national elections so low? We can take the easy route,
and say that people don’t care. But why is it that no one
cares? It’s because we don’t have real power.
When we obviously have little voice in how our education is
conducted, and when large power structures like the Board of
Regents seem to control everything, we have two choices: We can
pretend that when we graduate, we’ll have more control over
our jobs and lives, or we can demand that our opinions be taken
into account now, planting the seeds for social change.
People aren’t going to care about the system they’re
a part of until they know that their opinions matter in forming and
changing it. As the new generation, we need to make sure that
democracy is served ““ in the fullest sense of the word. This
means that there needs to be a fundamental change in how UC policy
is formed.
This entails the creation of a democratic body made up of
students, faculty and workers that decides how the university will
be run. This means that those who participate in the system control
their own destiny within it. When we have leaders that we as a
community choose, and when those leaders are accountable to us,
then we have the power to effect change in our environment.
This university is a microcosm of the outside world. If change
comes from within it, we are going to rock the power foundations of
this country irrevocably. Once we show that we can fix the problems
that exist throughout this university, our example will live as a
testament to the further possibilities of social change.
Change has consistently come about because of the efforts of
student movements, and if we work with faculty and workers, then
nothing can stop us. From across the political spectrum, we should
be able to agree that the fight for a better democracy is a
worthwhile struggle.
The fruits of this labor of love will be consumed by generations
to come, and their greater freedom will allow for a greater
appreciation of the beauty of the world around them.