Being from Chile myself, I was very interested in reading the article on the Chilean Winter published on Feb. 20. I must congratulate the authors for the thorough fieldwork that took place. It provides a fresh point of view in comparison to the traditional Chilean media, which covered most of the manifestations from the outside, treating them as you would expect any traditional media to treat them: focusing on violence and political background.
The Chilean Winter article states that the Chilean protests offer lessons to UC students. It is my opinion, that aside from the “big picture” goals of the protests – for example, education for all regardless of income – –the Chilean demonstrations should be seen as an example not to be followed, particularly for the U.S. education system. At the very least, some care should be taken regarding the way that demonstrations are organized.
There is no information provided in the Daily Bruin’s article to the reader regarding how these protests are managed within a campus. I did my undergraduate studies at the Universidad de Chile, and during my years there, the common practice for campus takeovers was a violent one.
Takeovers consisted of a dozen students entering university premises at night, chaining doors and displaying political messages from far-left movements.
During some years, particularly during the so-called Chilean Winter, the takeovers related to education policy demands instead of political messages. However, the modus operandi of the takeover remained the same.
There was no voting at all on most campuses before the initial takeover, and once the takeover was established, it was easy to bias future voting as most students were not present at the premises, which had been taken over by a small minority.
Other types of manifestations included stopping the campus from working at all, such as not allowing students to attend classes. In this case, a vote was generally announced a couple of weeks before, where the two choices were to either stop classes for all students indefinitely or to continue classes for all students.
The problem with this type of voting is that at some point the first choice would always win, due to external influences from other campuses or universities, unfair voting practices such as setting low quorums for the voting to be valid or assembly-based voting where dissident opinion was censored.
Moreover, once classes stopped, students were not allowed (by means of violence or threats to students or faculty) to attend regular campus activities, except for those committed to the manifestations. Every week after the original vote, another vote takes place to choose whether to continue with classes or not.
Once the campus is closed for traditional classes or activities, most of the students stay at home except for those that participate in manifestation-related activities. Due to the biased student mass present in campus the initial vote is normally upheld and the class hiatus continues. There is no provision for fair voting practices and no chance to vote remotely online. Sometimes you are only allowed to vote if you attend a three-hour assembly where the only means to be heard is through volume and exaltation.
There are some significant lessons that can be taken from the Chilean Winter, particularly that student organizations do have the possibility of changing unfair education policies. However, in Chile, one group of students can decide (either violently or disguised as a voting) whether another group has the right to attend class or not by taking over the campus or threatening students that want to attend the classes they signed up for. In the United States, where freedom of choice and respect for others are basic mottos, that kind of organization should be avoided.
Cortes is a doctoral student in civil engineering.
