On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students attending North Carolina A&T University refused to leave the counter at Woolworth’s when they were denied service.
The sit-in spurred protests and further sit-ins across the South, leading the way for the decade’s civil rights movement.
Fifty years after the heroic defiance of the Greensboro Four caused a revolution, the student protest continues to thrive.
The UCLA campus is no exception, most recently evidenced by Wednesday’s United Afghan Club’s teach-in to educate students about the history of the war in Afghanistan as well as the massive action that took place last November as a result of the fee hikes.
“The importance of protests goes far beyond just raising awareness and making a symbolic moral statement,” said fourth-year graduate student Alejandra Cruz. “We have our own collective power and we can make things happen independently of those who seek to exploit and oppress us.”
Cruz, a major player in the November protests, helped to organize the rally outside of Covel Commons as well as the sit-in that took place in Campbell Hall.
And while the Campbell Hall sit-in originated because of fee hikes, it evolved into a fight against racism, as the protest honored the Black Panthers who had been shot to death in the hall in 1969 over a dispute regarding the newly selected director of the black studies program.
“To be a student and not a revolutionary is a contradiction,” said USAC President Cinthia Flores.
For the past few years, the UCLA student body has wholeheartedly adopted that role of a revolutionary campus, as 2003 saw massive walkouts against the war and 2006 saw speak-outs against immigration reform bill HR 4437, Flores said.
November of 2006 also saw students dealing with more local issues, as the “death of diversity” march to Murphy Hall arose from the record-low admissions of black students.
“As UCLA students, our opinions and actions are given more weight and we can use that privilege and responsibility to change everything,” Cruz said. “We fought hard to get here ““ we want something meaningful to come from our accomplishment. I think that desire really helps to explain the impact and significance of the student movement at UCLA.”
Other notable student activism that has occurred at UCLA range from the 1970 protests over the conviction of the Chicago Seven to a three-day sit-in in 1985 over the apartheid in South Africa.
The year 2009 also saw a Facebook campaign against having James Franco as Commencement Speaker.
In 1993, a UCLA protest that utilized multiple forms of activism was held as a result of Chancellor Charles E. Young’s announcement that the interdisciplinary Chicano studies program would not be elevated to a departmental level.
Following the announcement, protestors staged a sit-in at the UCLA Faculty Center, causing an estimated $30,000 in damage and leading to the arrests of more than 80 students, faculty and community members.
The outcome of the sit-in further led nine protesters to stage a two-week hunger strike, as a village of tents arose around Young’s office in Murphy Hall.
Protests at UCLA have not been limited to students, as evidenced by last April’s Pro-Test for Science rally that was led by associate professor of psychology David Jentsch.
“Like many protests, ours was triggered by a feeling that our voices and positions were not being heard by the broader community,” Jentsch said. “Biomedical researchers at UCLA who use animals in their research were the targets of animal rights activists who used a range of methods to inhibit our academic freedom and socially sanctioned research.”
After his car was blown up by opposition activists, Jentsch, feeling silenced by the anti-testing movement, planned a massive rally of more than 700 Pro-Testers on the same day that an animal rights demonstration was taking place on campus.
Jentsch’s effort became the first mass pro-research demonstration in the United States.
“I personally think that public advocacy for your positions, including in the form of protests, is an age-old American tradition we should never lose,” Jentsch said. “It should always have a place in civil society.”