The UC Strike, And Why I'm Not Joining

History is repeating itself. Today marks another UC-wide strike. To be fair, the last UC-wide event like this was actually a rally, not a strike. And it was held on September 24th, when none of the other UC campuses (except for Merced, but who cares about that?) were in session. But in nearly two months, both my thoughts on the matter and my interest in the situation have greatly changed.

Last I wrote about the UC-walkout and the education crisis hammering California, I was excited. I wanted to walk out in solidarity with my fellow students, protesting the cutting of public education funding. To show my professors that their teaching had impacted me beyond the classroom, and that I wanted to fight for them. And to make sure that my younger brother would have the similar opportunities in the public educational realm as I did when it was time for him to go to college.

But writing today, you won’t find me picketing. Or even attending the rallies. In fact, I’ll be crossing the picket lines both this morning and this evening.

Why the lack of solidarity? I wrote about this briefly in my discussion on the UAW last week, but let me reiterate. When a social movement takes in too many different interests, like the UAW did by bringing in African-American Civil Rights and student activists, it risks splintering itself. Sure the UAW coalition got gains by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the Model Cities Plan and Community Action Programs it created were utter failures, and the various special interest groups within the coalition began to attack one another.

While not as severe, this is what I see happening with the UC-wide strike. There are too many interest groups, and too many different plans of attack being purported. Some of these issues came up at the rally, when the local union that represents service workers on campus began advocating for other issues relating to racial discrimination. Although important issues, these have nothing to do with the educational funding crisis, and shouldn’t be brought into the UC-wide strike. But they, as well as other opinions, are coming forth that harm the image of the movement.

Chief among these is the call to fire Mark Yudof. I do not see this as an effective, let alone warranted, action to alleviate the crisis. President Yudof took the job recently, knowing full well what he was getting into and that he would have to address funding. Sure he hasn’t dealt with issues of his salary and the UC Regents well. But when the going gets tough, the first group to get attacked is those at the top. Even if it’s not an effective solution.

The rally tomorrow is to protest the proposed 32 percent fee increase that will be approved at the UC Regents meeting. We should rally around a new idea for fixing the crisis rather than killing the messenger.

However, new ideas aren’t something that appeals to what has become a marginalized, “mob-rule” style of protest. And because the strike won’t be addressing that, I’m not going to partake. Besides, I’ve got a lot of papers due this week, and many students have midterms to take. Even teachers are loath to cancel class because it’s so close to the end of the semester (and we already missed one day on September 24th). Regardless of whether I’m paying over $10,000 on tuition, or 32 percent more than that, I’m still paying to be here. And I can’t justify skipping on classes when the teachers I respect are insisting that classes still go on.

So I’ll be working to complete my papers tomorrow. And when the dialogue changes to something more rational – cough, Prop 13, cough – and reasonable, I’ll rejoin in the conversation.