Students bring “˜UC Nuclear Free’ campaign to UCLA

Most UCLA students know more about weapons of mass destruction
being developed halfway across the world than those their own
university helps to produce.

The UC manages two labs for the Department of Energy ““ Los
Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories ““ that
design nuclear weapons. But members of a campaign entitled
“UC Nuclear Free” argue that developing nuclear weapons
is immoral and the university should not be involved.

“Students from Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Irvine
and now UCLA are now all working on this campaign together,”
said Michael Cox, a third-year political science student and member
of the UCLA chapter.

The group has raised its profile on other UC campuses, but the
UCLA chapter held its first meeting last month.

“To get the campaign started in UCLA, students need a
forum to voice concerns on this issue and to know about it,”
said Lindsay Cook, a third-year political science student.

Both Cook and Cox get their interest in the campaign from UC
Santa Barbara, where UC Nuclear Free has its headquarters.

Cook said that it is appropriate to have this group at UCLA, a
campus whose chancellor is an expert on national security and who
was a negotiator for a major international arms control
agreement.

The UC labs are not currently responsible for the production or
storage of nuclear weapons, but they do develop and maintain
nuclear technology.

University press aide Jeff Garberson said debate over the
university’s nuclear involvement has been a “regular
and understandable” occurrence in his 30 years at the UC.

“It is a sign of the strength of the democratic process
that people can debate this publicly and openly,” Garberson
said.

The university started running Los Alamos in 1943, as scientists
gathered there to create the world’s first atomic bomb in a
secret mission known as the Manhattan Project.

Among those protesting UC involvement with nuclear weapons is
Sir Joseph Rotblat, one of the researchers of the Manhattan Project
who is now lending his support to UC Nuclear Free.

He resigned from the Manhattan Project before its completion
after realizing that Hitler’s atomic weapons program was not
going to succeed, he said.

In 1995 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent
the spread of nuclear weapons.

Student activists argue that most of the international community
is on their side, as the vast majority of nations have agreed to a
treaty banning all nuclear testing.

But the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying this treaty in 1999,
allowing the labs to keep developing new nuclear weapons
technology.

Ironically, a nuclear explosion monitoring system in the
Livermore lab is used to enforce other nations’ compliance
with the treaty, said Michael Coffey, the Youth Outreach
Coordinator for UC Nuclear Free.

Members turned to one of Carnesale’s speeches titled
“Rethinking National Security,” delivered in February,
for additional support.

“It is hard to argue that others should have zero nuclear
weapons, but that the United States needs thousands of them,”
Carnesale said in the speech. “To be credible, the United
States must reduce its own nuclear arsenal.”

The group, which has both student and non-student members, is
also concerned the UC could be inventing new tactical nuclear
weapons that could be used in a possible conventional war with Iraq
or North Korea.

In spite of the university’s long-standing support of the
labs’ activities, UC Nuclear Free wants the university to
cancel its contracts with the Department of Energy and stop running
the labs, because it questions the morality of the university.

“Please raise your voices and demand that the University
of California get out of the business of making weapons of mass
destruction” Roblat said in an open letter he sent to the
university in May.

The UC Regents have yet to reply to the letter. They are
scheduled to discuss the lab contracts at their March meeting,
which is at UCLA.