Ethnic Studies Journal # 2: On Strike! Ethnic Studies

It was eerie knowing that I had sat on the steps of Sproul Hall, innocently eating lunch among my LLC when decades ago, students were gathered in protest. During the Labor Day weekend, I asked my parents if they remembered the strike. My father was a graduate of UC Berkeley and had gone to school during the sixties. He said he did remember, but I was surprised by his opinion on the latter. He said that the the protests concerned Vietnam and of course, Ethnic Studies.

My father began to recall his experiences during his college career, telling me about how he would be one of two people in lectures, because the majority of students were protesting. He said that sometimes he'd come to school and his eyes immediately water and sting.

"At first I had no idea what it was, but then I realized it was all the residual tear gas the police used on students the night before. I learned quickly not to rub your eyes. It was the worse thing you could do," he told as he demonstrated how he'd take off his glasses and blink furiously. I tried to imagine my father arriving on a desolate campus, tear gas lingering in the air and posters strewn over the expanse.

My father told me that he never participated in any of the protests during his years at UC Berkeley. "I was a student and I studied." He said as a commuter he had little time to socialize and if he did, he never had any money to eat out with his friends. "I had to go off sometimes and just count the money I had in my pocket to see if I could afford a cheap burger. So I'd just go to school and go home to work."

"If you could do it all over again? Knowing you could be a student and also participate in movements or social activities...Would you have changed what you did?" I was hopeful he would say 'yes', because my father after all was a student of color.

To my disappointment he said, "No. I don't think I would." As we discussed the protests more, my father's opinion became more prominent. He implied that he felt the protests were not necessarily a nusiance or wrong and he certainly did not take sides, but he felt that the protesters were overlooking the budget problem. "If there's not enough money what can you do? Cuts are going to have to be made and if there are classes that not many people are attending, what can you do? It's inevitable." I did agree as much as I admired the protesters; their bravery and passion really touched me. I did have to agree with my father, as today similar problems like the budget crisis go on, that if there isn't money cuts are bound to happen. If there was a solution proposed by the protesters, then I would see little problems with the protest, if none at all.

I was shocked to see how brutal the police treated the students. Beating them with batons, seizing them and dragging them out of halls by their arms and spraying them tear gas. It was unbelievable how people reacted to the protests. I was irritated that most people could not see the "point" of the argument. People seemed to take a broader approach of what my father had said. They appeared to view the protesters as no more than rowdy and radical nuisances, treating them like children or ignoring them all together. It really seemed like nobody took the college students (world wide) seriously, just treating them as a brainless mob of demands. At Berkeley, it took the involvement of the professors to really make a clear statement that they were "kidding around" or just "making noise." It should not have come to that. Still, it was very powerful to see Ronald Takaki speak. I really wish I could have gotten the chance to have sat through one of this classes. He looked like such an interesting person and reading his book has confirmed it.