When students occupy a building on a college campus, the expectation is that youth, intelligence and energy have come together to produce a positive, constructive transformation.
The assumption, under these circumstances, is that some guiding individual or philosophy has caused smart, albeit frustrated individuals to forego the potential consequence of legal repercussions in order to compel a relevant higher authority to do something differently.
By these standards, what happened at Campbell Hall on Thursday was a false alarm.
Reports from inside the building, which was occupied during an 18-hour standoff, said that no collective leadership or cause existed among those occupying the building and that many of those who seemed to be “in control” were not students at all.
Protesters in Campbell wasted no time in erroneously turning the fee hikes, which will disproportionately affect minority groups, into an issue of racial prejudice. They’re not.
And faulty arguments like those only distracted protesters from channeling their energy toward those at fault for the injustice.
Instead of bussing to Sacramento or writing to state legislators, protesters at Covel Commons and Campbell raised hell for the UC Regents, a governing body of this institution ““ not this state.
But all in all, there’s a lot to applaud about what went on at UCLA last week, including the actions (though not the planning) of the students who occupied Campbell.
Students came out in large numbers to defend their education and its accessibility in the face of one of the most damaging fee hikes in recent memory.
Campus leaders organized protests and passionate demonstrators traveled miles, slept on floors and rushed doors to show their support.
They marched and they chanted; they hooted and they picketed; they hollered and they pouted; and in the end, they didn’t burn the house down.
Students voiced their minds on an injustice they saw and did everything they could to make sure the Regents wouldn’t vote through an enormous fee increase without hearing chants of disapproval in the background.
In all those ways, last week’s student protests were successes.
But for all their triumphs, the demonstrations were miserable failures.
The Regents passed the fee hike almost unanimously with the only opposing vote being that of the student Regent.
The student voice was heard, but what did it say?
That we are angry? That we disapprove? Come on!
No longer is it enough to voice sentiments in public protest. When our parents and grandparents marched and chanted for equal rights and social change, the path to how things should be was clear; student voices were the catalyst for change because there was obviously something wrong with the way things were.
Today, we as university students must push ourselves to be the source of solutions, not just strong sentiments.