This week’s theme on the imperialism of the university as well as the corporatization of it from last week has got me thinking more and more about how our own campus is possibly corporatized or imperialized. Other than tuition hikes and the recent issue of the smoke from the Butte County fire, I personally cannot think of anything else that has directly affected me during my time here at UC Davis so far. However, other universities across the nation have experienced many more cases of this imperialism. When the author in The Imperial University mentions their experience of the SWAT team storming in at UC Riverside, I am reminded of what our students had to go through during the Pepper Spray Incident eight years back. As we may already know, the incident was a harmless protest, but the police did not hesitate to intervene and establish their power dynamic with the pepper spray. Something else that stood out to me in this article is that I did not know that UC Davis had a decolonize movement that was inspired by the Egyptian revolution in 2011 at Tahrir Square in addition to the few other protests students have had that ended in imprisonment of Davis students and faculty. I know that I do not keep up with the current news as much as I should but some of my peers and I were not aware of these occasions and I believe that it is because they are not broadcasted as much. I understand that the university wants to keep things under wraps to avoid as much conflict as possible, but issues that are protested for are issues that students care for and at the end of the day, it is our university, not just the people who run it.
Q: If there is something we as students want to fix, improve, or protest against, is there a safe way in doing so without experiencing the same consequences others have faced in the past?
References:
Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (2014). Introduction: The Imperial University: Race, war, and the nation-state. The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent, 1-50.
Whose Univeristy Our University Protest - Google Search. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS789US789&biw=1439&bih=691&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=yTRWXPmGEKnD0PEPqIuakAI&q=whose+univeristy+our+university+protest&oq=whose+univeristy+our+university+protest&gs_l=img.3...3444.4796..4892...0.0..0.73.466.8......1....1..gws-wiz-img.uOrKLoHNGJg#imgrc=CZ0YAZjFDJeEzM: Accessed 3 Feb. 2019.
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