• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Tuesday, September 30, 1997

Glamorous facade belies activist history

WELCOME: Students at UCLA have opportunity, potential to affect change

By Stacy Hae Lim Lee

So you just moved into your dorm, and you're hanging up posters and pictures and arranging your desk just the way you like it. Maybe then it will feel more like home. You have a box of free stuff - replete with all the "necessities" that are quite disposable for our convenience - on the desk (also available in Ackerman) supplied by all the companies that are wooing the mighty dollars away from students' overflowing pockets (I'm being sarcastic). After looking through that box, you twiddle your thumbs a bit and ponder what to do next. On a normal day back at home, it wouldn't be a struggle to figure out what the next five hours of your day will be spent doing, but today is different - it is your entrance into your new life at UCLA.

So you thought the first day was a trial - it doesn't stop there. I'm not trying to frighten anyone; this is one of the most exciting times in our lives, but all the possibilities can be as overwhelming as they can be inviting. It's a time for us all to start making choices again. Majors, classes, friends, organizations and ideas are all a part of our experience here, but the differences lie in the choices we make. This is the time where we have the opportunity - and the time - to start re-evaluating ourselves and the world we live in. I remember imagining what life in college would be like. I thought it would be a group of students, engaging in intellectual debate about the ways of the world and why things are the way they are. I didn't find that place - at least not right away.

UCLA is Hollywood. People are all beautiful and overdressed, half of the movies ever made were filmed here, and UCLA isn't exactly a haven for those of us who don't have much money. You will see people hang out for hours on Bruin Walk, staring at all who pass by. There are those of us who will become consumed in our classes and never emerge from beneath the books, and their counterparts who forget where their class is the eighth week into the quarter.

But for those of you who are interested in having those conversations, discovering the world and yourself, and doing something about what you learn, you have to look beyond the glam of this place and see it for what it really is. Although we pose as the mecca for wannabe Barbie dolls and famous Star Trek alumni, we are also one of the most actively organized campuses in the fight for social justice and social change. In the 1960s, Bunche Carter and John Huggins, both members of the Black Panther Party, were shot in front of Campbell Hall by men who were later identified as part of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

COINTELPRO was a program designed by the FBI to target and stop (by any means) the leadership of the civil rights movement, specifically Black Power.

UCLA was also home to the High Potential Program, which is what the Academic Advancement Program (AAP) came from, where at-risk youth who had shown leadership skills were given a chance to go to college. These young people often became leaders on campus and continued that program until it was watered down by university administration. When the Gulf War erupted, the UCLA campus was shut down by masses of students, angry with the selfish concerns of the U.S. government and concerned with the rights of the people in the Middle East who were subjected to the most advanced military forces in the world. During the time when Propositions 184 (the three strikes law), 187 (the anti-immigrant law) and 209 (the anti-affirmative action law) came around, UCLA students were there to challenge the oppressive policies of people who have more power and money than some of us could comprehend.

That, being just a brief history of the concern of students at UCLA, shows the potential power we hold. None of these things came about out of chance but out of a concerned effort to understand our world and how to change it. That understanding of our world does not come from these institutions of "education" but rather from our challenges and questions of how these structures operate and deal or don't deal with people. Most of us aren't even aware of how or why all of these things happen, but that's OK. As long as we are willing to learn and question and do something about our new understandings, things will change.