Mike de la Rocha De La Rocha served as
the president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council for
the 1999-2000 academic year.
I still remember that fateful summer day in 1995 when I first
set foot onto this campus. It seemed so big and so lonely, so
impersonal, yet vibrant with energy and excitement. It was the
beginning of a campaign centering around the issue of affirmative
action and equal access to an education that still continues to
make headlines today on this campus and the rest of the
country.
It was a time when I saw a broad-based coalition of student
organizations, student government, labor unions and community
groups stop traffic in the busiest intersection in the entire
nation to protest the UC Regents’ politically motivated vote
to eliminate affirmative action. And it was a time where I was
introduced to a long and rich history of student activism and
struggle here at UCLA.
Although I came to UCLA during a time of justified outrage and
anger, I also entered a university where students had hope in their
eyes and were putting forth a vision for a better future and
society ““ a vision that was based on strong feelings of love
and collectivity. This vision would not accept notions of student
apathy and powerlessness, but rather stressed that students and
communities would fight back when they recognized their own power
and ability to end social injustice and inequality.
Back then, I may have been a young and naïve 18-year-old
who was still trying to understand the world and my place in it,
but I was indeed privileged to be entering a university that was in
the midst of a huge struggle.
During the summer of 1995, the UC Regents not only sparked a
national movement by ending the use of affirmative action, but in
the process, instantly politicized thousands of students, including
myself.
Despite massive objection from all nine UC chancellors, the
majority of the UC student population, staff, faculty, labor unions
and administration, the regents took away one of the most
fundamental gains of the civil rights movement.
This historic vote had a huge impact on my UCLA experience
because it greatly hindered the educational experience that my
fellow classmates and I would have throughout our college years.
Not only did it homogenize the student population, but it also
created a hostile and unwelcoming environment for many students of
color.
But why did the end of affirmative action so negatively affect
the entire UC system? Why does this issue continue to be of the
utmost importance for all UCLA students and the rest of the state
and nation?
I could sit here and quote studies that prove how much
affirmative action helps prepare students for a diverse workplace
and job market; how underrepresented students of color are more
likely to return to their neighborhoods as teachers, physicians,
lawyers, and community leaders. I could continue with studies from
Harvard and Princeton that further prove that having a diverse
student body greatly improves class discussions and plays a vital
role in changing student views about life, history and people, but
that wouldn’t do justice to the reason so many of us continue
to fight so hard for educational access.
You see, many of us have no choice but to fight for affirmative
action because it was affirmative action that gave me and thousands
of others like me the opportunity to even attain an education in
the first place.
We have no choice because our ancestors and parents before us
struggled to ensure that we could even sit in a classroom with
people of different ethnicities and backgrounds. We have no choice
because we understand that we have a responsibility to continue
fighting for what is right and just.
We didn’t fight for affirmative action simply because of
the numbers. We always fought because it was the morally right and
just thing to do. We fought because many of us were feeling more
and more isolated on a campus where we could count the number of
underrepresented students of color in our classrooms and in our
residence halls on one hand. We fought because if we, as students
didn’t fight, then no one else would.
I quickly learned that the UCLA administration, and even the UC
Regents for that matter, would not be on the side of students and
our communities in ensuring everyone has the same basic rights and
opportunities to attain an education. It was through organizing
that we learned that the majority of our victories came from
winning the war on the streets.
History proves that, from the gains of the civil rights movement
to the victory in the building of the ethnic studies centers, we
won because of a unified front of community organizations,
legislators and most importantly, a strong, broad-based
multi-racial coalition of student organizations pressuring the
university to change.
Change will never happen because Chancellor Albert Carnesale or
any other politician or public official has good intentions, but
because we collectively organize and force the university to make
this campus and system more accessible and accountable to all of
us.
As Stacy Lee, a close friend and former USAC president said,
“What I saw during the campaign around affirmative action was
the immense opportunity to politicize the student population. Most
critical, however, is the political lessons for students to learn
from the process and outcome of the campaign. We didn’t
always know where we were going, or who to go to ““ and I hope
that students are taking the time now to take notes and learn the
invaluable strategic lessons that long-term struggle offers. It
wasn’t always this unified and bold of a struggle ““
especially after Proposition 209 passed, but, through all the ups
and downs, leadership transitions and failures in strategy, the
human impact this decision made on people’s futures was
always the underlying motivation to move past the division and
frustrations presented to us.”
This year, the student organizations involved in the Affirmative
Action Coalition grew together and through the mistakes of the past
learned how to win a struggle that began long before us.
Although SP-1 and 2 have been repealed, the struggle continues
in the Academic Senate and again in the streets where, as Scott
Kurashige said, we will have to “look beyond the issue of
admission to elite colleges and think more fundamentally about what
kind of education we need to radically change our
society”
So I challenge all of us to not buy into the university’s
massive media campaign applauding the increase in the total number
of underrepresented students of color systemwide.
Remember to always think critically, because when we do, we will
see the contradictions in the system’s logic. We will see
that the news stories emphasizing the rise in transfers or students
of color are meant to focus attention away from one of the biggest
educational crises of our time ““ that the UC should have
aggressively reached out to marginalized communities. This proves
that the system has been systematically denying communities of
color an opportunity to gain an education.
The news stories polish over the fact that the population of
Chicano students and other underrepresented communities are
drastically increasing in the state of California, leading to more
students applying and offsetting the higher minority rejection
rates. The fact that we now have more underrepresented students of
color systemwide shows that the UC system has been discriminating
against minority students for a long time because we could have
filled up these campuses years ago, but didn’t.
Next year is pivotal for the UCLA community and for the rest of
the UC system. It’s a year in which we’ll have the
lowest number of African American freshman students in more than 25
years. A year in which UCLA only allowed 12 American Indian
students into the freshman class. But it’s also the year in
which we will again have a progressive student government and a
strong and united multiracial coalition of student organizations
committed to continuing the fight for our future.
The victory at the May regents meeting showed our strength and
power ““ now we have the opportunity to push the envelope and
build up for the fight against Proposition 209.
We now have the opportunity to achieve the vision we have all
inherited. A vision that puts love at the center of our organizing
and of our lives, and shows that we can transform ourselves, our
world and our campuses for the better.