Coalitions stand up to regents’ decisions
By Patrick Marantal
Daily Bruin Contributor
Since their inception beginning in the 1960s, UCLA’s student
advocacy groups have long been a hotbed of student activism. And
with the controversial end of affirmative action policies, the
organizations are once again fanning the flames of protest.
UCLA’s Affirmative Action Coalition, composed largely of student
advocacy groups, was responsible not only for the organization and
leadership of Wednesday’s rally, but for most of the other forms of
protests at UCLA against the UC Regents’ widely debated
decision.
"Basically, we are letting students know, through grassroots
organizing, that they can effect change irrespective of all the
institutional barriers placed on students," said Max Espinoza,
chairperson of MEChA, UCLA’s Chicana/o student activist group.
"Protest is but one method we use."
Advocates of Wednesday’s action said the protest was a rallying
point to send the regents a clear message to rescind their
decision.
"The (student activist) groups and students that are
participating in the rally show that students aren’t going to sit
idly in the back of the bus and let the regents ride this
university off a cliff," said York Chang, UCLA’s undergraduate
president.
And members of the Affirmative Action Coalition maintained that
although there have been no major campus protests since October,
they have not been idle in their attempts to rescind the board’s
decision.
While members have attended and lobbied board meetings, the
regents have marginalized the student voice, claimed Levin Sy,
director of the Asian Pacific Coalition. He cited threatening to
eliminate the student regent position, moving meetings permanently
to UC San Francisco and capping lobbyists’ speaking times before
the board.
And while attempts have been made to work with the regents,
those failed attempts have yielded into mass protests, activists
said.
"We tirelessly try to rationalize and civilly discuss issues
with members of the Board of Regents and others (which) has clearly
meant nothing to them," Espinoza said. "Therefore, their actions
have pushed us to take other means of achieving our goals."
Although other California universities are organizing rallies to
resist the regent’s decision, the issue has been focused primarily
on the UCLA campus because of better organization and the need to
start protests at a sizeable campus, said Sabrina Smith, field
organizer for the University of California Students
Association.
Organizers also hoped students would be galvanized by the day of
the protest, said Maricar Salvador, vice-president of Samahang,
UCLA’s Pilipino student activist group.
Signatures were due Wednesday to qualify the California Civil
Rights Initiative (CCRI) for the November 1996 ballot. The
initiative, which campus activists widely opposed, would ban the
use of race and sex preferences in all state agencies, including
the UCs.
But despite the apparent fate of affirmative action, organizers
hoped the issue will prove a starting point for a politically
active student body.
"It is important to show students’ power," Salvador said. "We
have to show them (the regents) that we are really against this. It
makes people stop and think that it’s not that simple or that the
case is closed."
Furthermore, organizers said the "Revote or Revolt"
demonstration will spark a long line of affirmative action protests
at other University of California schools and stiffen resistance
against CCRI, Smith said.
"We need to focus on affirmative action attacks, flawed
prioritization and attacks on financial aid," Smith said. "(But)
beyond this quarter, students will be focusing efforts to battle
CCRI."
Organizers also maintained that they faced not only the
challenge of changing the regents’ minds, but also getting students
to recognize affirmative action’s significance.
"Our primary focus is educating our members because we find that
a lot of them don’t know what’s going on," Salvador said. "Even if
we got affirmative action back, we could lose it again easily if
people don’t realize its importance or value,"
And regardless of the student campaign’s failure so far to
return affirmative action to California universities, coalition
members believed that the "Revote or Revolt" protest is a key step
to insuring its return.
"I don’t think by any means it’s a final gasp," Smith said. "We
(have been) working throughout this year. We’ve kept the issue
alive at every Board of Regent’s meeting and forced the regents to
delay implementation.
"It (the protest) is not merely a dying gasp, but a resurgence
of efforts," she added.Comments to webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu