Activism on the Campus

Ryota Ogura

sec A02

Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the way for campus activism

  The story of free speech movement in UC Berkeley was quite interesting to me.  The process of the protester getting to the point of negotiation with the authority was impressive. I like how they protest against the authority by sitting, and most importantly, with no violence; there were no pepper sprays.

   The story immediately reminded me the occupy movement and pepper spray incident on UC Davis campus last year, but the outcomes of these two events seem very different. In my idea, that difference came from whether they tried to seek the settlement, or negotiation with the authority. The negotiation is one of the factors that differentiate insistence from grumbling resist.  Unfortunately, I think the occupy movement in Davis is more like the latter. The occupy movement originated in Wall Street to protest and bring up the issue of increasing gap of the poor and the rich, and the fact that middle class people are falling into lower category, and then spread nationwide. I wonder if they had to follow the same manner and camp to protest against the tuition hike. At first there were a large number of tents, but they become less and less as time goes on and eventually diminished.  I could see their goal, but could not see the path to it. I admire who acquired the freedom of speech on campus and respect the activists. However, I think, at least some part, there are people who hold the large shield of “freedom of speech” in front of them and participate in activism for fashion. Activism is powerful, but if you do not have strategy and/or interfere with other people’s life, people may regard them as a problem, and produce the gap as in Arab community after 911 (Naber).

Q: The freedom of speech movement enables political activity on the campus. Do you think the education is free from politics?