Week 8: Charlene Chan, Section 2

Week 8: Student Activism

Charlene Chan

Section 2

May 21, 2017

Week 8: Student Activism

This week’s “Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students Negotiating Power in Academic Wonderland” by Leslie Đỗ and Shannon Deloso analyzed the concept of “institutionalized student activism” in the context of the 2016 SFSU hunger strike. This phrase is defined by Professor Valverde as referring to “university orchestrated activism that are then carried on by students working and volunteering in university designed student service center” (3). In other words, it is merely a facade of activism, constructed to placate unhappy students with a semblance of progress and movement with no real change occurring. After all, how can a movement created by the very institution that you are challenging do any real damage?

It is easy to believe that the university is on your side: that we are to be nurtured and educated here, and allowed to reach our full potential. It’s what we want to believe. But the reality is that there are forces at work in the system besides those of good that inspired and drove us to pursue an education in the first place. These are the forces that we must challenge as activist-students, as Đỗ and Deloso stress, time and time again.

Deloso writes that “learning Ethnic Studies was like opening Pandora’s box” (14), a sentiment I agree with. When I told my mom that I was taking Asian American Studies this quarter, she was afraid that it would make me angry and unhappy. Although there is a certain truth to that, I feel that even as ignorance is said to be bliss, we would fall into a rut of complacency without the refined anger and channeled passion that fuels activism.

Below are images of the 1968 SF Student Strike and 2016 SFSU Hunger Strike.

Question: How do we challenge the university as activist-students without alienating it as our source of higher education?

References:

Campus commemorates 1968 student-led strike. (n.d.). Retrieved May 21, 2017, from http://www.sfsu.edu/news/2008/fall/8.html

Riley, R. (2016, February 26). Hundreds Protest $2M Budget Cuts to San Francisco State University Ethnic Studies Program. Retrieved May 21, 2017, from http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/02/26/hundreds-protest-2m-budget-cuts-to-san-francisco-state-university-ethnic-studies-program/