Week 8 - Do Won Lee

Do Won Lee

Section 2

Week 8

            One of this week’s readings was a paper written by two college students, one attending UC Davis and the other attending San Francisco State University. The paper follows Leslie Do and her experiences in UC Davis, and Shannon Deloso in SFSU, as they each go through their own struggles in bringing about change in two different academic circumstances. Shannon writes about fighting against the budget cuts set on the College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU, and how she had to manage communication between the President of the University, the Dean of Ethnic Studies, and the students that were looking up to her. Her conflict with the school becomes resolved when the school agrees to increase funding into ethnic studies. But she comes to realize that this increase in funding was a pyrrhic victory. The whole process of increasing funding made the students realize that the school does not have the students as their priority. Shannon took the role as a leader for her community when she was doubtful of herself. However, Shannon’s leadership and activism was what led to the increase of funding into ethnic studies at SFSU. When Shannon and other supporters of their cause learned that the school doesn’t prioritize their students, it only validated the reason why student activism in necessary in institutions like SFSU, because without student activism, the lives of students and their educations may not improve.

            Leslie’s story is slightly different, but also involves the activism of students, or rather, the skewed perspective of one side of students activism affecting the efforts of other activists. Leslie writes about the experience a professor at UC Davis had with some of his students in one of his classes, the conflicts that certain students conjured because they didn’t approve of things like how he addresses the class, they didn’t focus on the learning material of the class, but rather just something as simple as his usage of certain words. Leslie also writes of a undergraduate student who had difficulty with a group of high schoolers who wouldn’t listen to him simply because, once again, they didn’t approve of his choice of words and the way he addressed them. Leslie wants people to acknowledge that the administration is trying to turn people against one another by polarizing the perspective of one group, so that they would hinder the progress and improvements of other groups. Students need to be active in changing the schools for better, but when some are misled, their activism can be a hindrance to the true goal and progress needs to be made to relieve people of their miseducated ignorance and remedy any ill will caused by it.

Question: What are ways to prevent people from turning away the voice of others simply because they didn't use the "correct" way to address and refer people?

Watterson, B. (1994). Calvin and Hobbes [Cartoon].