Administration treats peaceful students like criminals

Thursday, May 28, 1998

Administration treats peaceful students like criminals

GESTAPO TACTICS: Decision to involve LAPD during Royce protest
shows dangerously low tolerance for dissent

By Michael Cooperson

I’m bitterly disappointed with the UCLA administration. Not
because of Proposition 209, which, as Chancellor Carnesale
correctly pointed out, he has no choice but to uphold, but because
of the way his administration responded to the protest at Royce
Hall.

As a UCLA faculty member, I disagree with most of what I heard
emanating from the demonstrators’ megaphones on Tuesday. Obviously,
the most effective way to bring more African American and Latino
students onto campus is to improve the wretched K-12 schools that
many of them have no choice but to attend. Admittedly, "improving
the schools" is a vast undertaking, and frustrated student
activists would rather start the process closer to home. But the
decline in minority admissions to UCLA and Berkeley is largely
offset by increased enrollments at other UC campuses. Indeed, by
protesting at the more prestigious campuses, the activists
undermine their own argument. Admission to UCLA and Berkeley has
symbolic importance, precisely because those institutions maintain
higher academic standards. If education alone were the issue, the
activists would be clamoring at the doors of trade schools and
junior colleges, and picketing the LAUSD. Yet if UCLA and Berkeley
did lower their standards, as the activists demand, then there
would no longer be any compelling reason to study there.

I attribute no originality to this argument, and I’m willing to
discuss it with anyone who knows more about the issue than I do.
Moreover, I respect the right of those who disagree with me to
advocate their point of view, and, if they deem it necessary, to
hold peaceful demonstrations on campus.

The administration, however, takes a different view. According
to the e-mail sent to the faculty, demonstrators had "occupied"
Royce Hall. But from what I could see, students were protesting
inside the building, not occupying it. "Occupy" means to seize: to
prevent those inside from leaving, and those outside from coming
in. This, as even the administration’s e-mail admitted, was not
happening. Of course, the protesters did announce their intention
to remain in Royce indefinitely. This is a time-honored tactic of
civil disobedience, and means that you stay until the police come
and remove you; when they do, you go peacefully, without resisting
arrest. And these were peaceful demonstrators; my office sits
across from Royce Hall, and at no time did I overhear them
announcing their intention to harm anyone. Listening to the
speeches, I did feel a strong urge to enroll some of the orators in
a public speaking course; but (unlike my superiors, apparently) I
did not feel the urge to threaten them with a Rodney King
special.

I appreciate the administration’s concern for safety and order.
I also admire the chancellor for meeting with the protesters, and
for stating his position forthrightly. However, I fail to see how
bringing LAPD riot squads onto campus can be justified – either as
a safety measure or as part of a reasoned response to the issues
the protest raises.

Perhaps campus officials failed to realize that the world has
changed since the late ’60s, or perhaps they watch too many Bruce
Willis movies. For whatever reason, they forgot that these
protesters are not drug-crazed criminals or gun-toting terrorists;
they are our students, our colleagues and our friends. As
professors and administrators, our task is to teach them, and
perhaps even to learn from them. In any event, we most certainly do
not have the right to choke them with tear gas or bludgeon them
with nightsticks, or to allow the LAPD to do so with our approval.
I do not fault the police for doing their jobs – indeed, they
appear to have understood better than the administration that
brutality was unnecessary – but I do fault UCLA officials for
meeting a peaceful protest with implied threats of violence.

I have a friend who participated in the strike at Mills College
in May 1990, when students took over the campus to protest the
decision to admit men to the all-women’s institution. She reports
that the Oakland Police Department – a wiser institution than the
UCLA administration or the LAPD – declined to intervene. She also
recalls that one of her professors, enraged by the sight of
demonstrators who had linked hands to block access to a building,
tried to break through the line: "A 6’3" man – a gray-haired guy in
a suit and a tie carrying a briefcase – went down like an offensive
tackle and charged 18- to 20-year-old women who were his own
students!"

When authority is challenged, those who have it – President
Suharto of Indonesia, for example – forget whose heads it is they
suddenly want to crack.

But if the university has any authority, it comes not from an
imagined right to manhandle its students, but from its reputation
as a sanctuary of rational discourse.

I hope that UCLA students can forgive the administration for
treating them like criminals, and that campus officials, in turn,
will treat any future demonstrations with realism, respect and
restraint.

I don’t agree with the views of the Royce Hall demonstrators,
but if UCLA calls out the riot squad again, I might just go down
there and start protesting too.