More than 100 students from UC Berkeley and Oakland High School gathered on Sproul Plaza at noon today to protest in support of restoring affirmative action.
Students marched from Sproul Plaza and went around Memorial Glade and gathered again on Sproul chanting slogans and holding banners that read “Defend Affermative Action and Integration; Stop the Re-segregation of Higher Education.”
“Oppressed communities are uniting and fighting to gather and telling the truth about racism and inequality,” said Yvette Felarca, an English and History teacher at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley and a spokesperson for BAMN.
The proposition laid the groundwork for more attacks on higher education for students, such as tuition hikes, said Felarca.
“We need the leaders from Oakland, and we need the leaders from UC Berkeley fighting together,” she added.
Since voters approved the proposition in 1996, the numbers of Latino, black, Native American and other underrepresented minority students attending the UC’s flagship universities have declined precipitously, the organization’s website states.
According to UC Berkeley admissions data, 342 black students were admitted in fall 2011, constituting 3.4 percent of the admitted class. The number represents a 7.2 percent increase from fall 2010 and an 11 percent increase from fall 2007, when 308 black students were admitted.
The frustration and anxiety are understandable but the methods of protest are “more detrimental than helpful just because of the connotation that these types of protests have,” said UC Berkeley junior Francisco Luna, who was observing the protest. “I think it was more effective in the ’60s because it was new … It might be time to adopt a different way to protest.”
The protesters dispersed around 1 p.m.
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affirmative action is a hate crime
Ah Yvette. Same old same old. Can’t get any real support from UCB students, so you get Oakland kids who just want to skip schools. A few years ago a DC reporter asked the kids what they were protesting, and they had no clue. Nice try, tho Yvette.
And I used to just skip school to drink beer at the lake. Does anyone remember anything from middle school besides acne? I bet these kids learned a lesson in community activism. Whether you are on the right or left, there is no shortage of things that need fixing in this world. Sure, there might be more effective ways to protest, but I cannot think of a better way to get teenagers to feel like they have a voice in a world that has left them with only a few routes, tough ones, to success.
[And I used to just skip school to drink beer at the lake. Does anyone remember anything from middle school besides acne? I bet these kids learned a lesson in community activism. ]
Hopefully they learned that adults will give them things (money, time off from school) in return for being able to politically manipulate them, but somehow I don’t think most of them are that bright…