Activists need a plan to succeed
By Ross Aikins
May 27, 2008 9:05 p.m.
Activism is a hallmark of higher education, but I don’t know if we, as a college student collective, have improved at it since our “revolutionary” progenitors of the ’60s and ’70s. It’s good to see UCLA spearheading change, since activism is supposedly one thing Berkeley is known for.
This is also important is because there are “best practices” for campus activism. Our relatively brief four-year stint here gives us a small window for improvement, and we’re really not helping ourselves if we don’t learn what does and doesn’t work.
Though I’m unaware of any awards ceremony for accomplishments by a student group, if there was such an accolade, I would give the Oscar equivalent for Best Achievement by a UCLA Student Group to the Asian Pacific Coalition for its successful “Count Me In!” campaign, which resulted in the UC Office of the President announcing plans to disaggregate the “Asian” category on the 2009 UC application.
Whatever these guys did, it worked.
For those who didn’t catch this news back in the fall, the change was announced by Judy Sakaki, UC vice president of student affairs.
“Starting at UCLA, Asian American and Pacific Islander student leaders channeled their activism into what I believe was an effective and positive grassroots campaign … (without which) a policy change most likely would not have occurred,” said Bill Kidder, special assistant to Sakaki. “Up until now, UC had not collected data on many of California’s most disadvantaged Asian American communities, such as Hmong, Cambodian and Laotian.”
“It’s probably the biggest success that the APC has had in many years,” said Melissa Phatharanavik, program director for APC during the “Count Me In!” campaign.
The coalition worked closely with UCLA’s United Khmer Students, Pacific Islands Student Association and the Association of Hmong Students on the initiative.
Out of the hundreds of causes annually advocated by student groups on our campus, I would challenge that only a minority of them result in outcomes beyond increasing awareness or contributing nominal amounts of money toward said causes.
Don’t feel slighted if my hypothetical student-achievement sweepstakes has only one fictional award to give ““ tangible change is hard to induce.
The cooperation between APC and UCOP stands out partly because of how it happened.
According to Phatharanavik and Kidder, APC approached UCOP with its concerns and found willing advocates within UCOP. The APC demanded change, and UCOP needed exposure to the issues and a public push from students to provide the impetus for change. Five thousand postcards later, the change was announced.
“It was very surreal. There’s this notion that students don’t have the power. It really helped us realize our power as students,” said Phatharanavik.
If there are other lessons to be gained from the APC’s success, they can be found in the value of patience, timing and finding the right allies. “We were very patient, it took over a year,” said Phatharanavik, who reached out to UCOP after hearing of their interest in AB-295, a state initiative supporting the diversity of Asian American and Pacific Americans.
“We were very lucky to have Bill Kidder and Judy Sakaki,” said Phatharanavik. “It’s definitely helpful to have allies.”
Another good tactic is having real data. In this case, the need for accurate data was a driving issue, and preexisting research supported the cause.
Whatever the cause, a footnote on your leaflet from a peer-reviewed source or two can make your advocacy effort more credible ““ we’re all academics after all, so this should be important when advancing any discourse.
The APC’s success also reminds us that, to the surprise of many, there may actually be sympathetic ears within high-ranking administrative offices. Often, activism assumes an adversarial posture. Try collegiality before smiting the establishment.
A good example of bad advocacy would be the sticker tags you can find throughout campus depicting the UC Regents, uh, shafting UC laborers, implying that UCLA’s $22.4 billion in net “assets” aren’t being judiciously dispersed. The market value of the endowment for the entire UC system is “only” $6.4 billion, and I don’t understand how net assets play into this. It’s not like we can liquidize Kerckhoff Hall or sell the Bruin Bear on eBay.
While these recommendations may not resonate with the human chain protesting the UC Regents meeting weeks ago or within groups such as “By Any Means Necessary,” the many successes of our student groups prove that when it comes to effective activism, clearly some means are preferred.
E-mail Aikins at [email protected] if your activism is more like “wactivsm.”
