The Student Movement: Choosing Sides

A tumultuous Fall term at California’s universities promises to give way to a new year of struggle in which tensions and divisions will only increase. There are as many ways to describe this conflict as there are students, but its basic contours are shaped by an economic system that demands a continuous and ever-increasing input of work and that, in return, concedes ever fewer tangible benefits, which can often only be wrested from the swirling vortex of value-accumulation via credit, obtained at the cost of…future work. The university student has, at least for the past two decades, faced a basic and worsening dilemma: given her dismal economic prospects, now and in the future, she must choose between working now for a pittance or deferring her labor to some later date that might offer her minimally better odds at a living wage, but at the cost of massive debt accumulation that will likely negate whatever salarial advantage her degree grants her. This situation has become increasingly worse of late, as rising costs (of living and tuition) far outstrip incremental gains in wages. Upon graduating from high school (if lucky enough, wealthy enough, or white enough to do so), young adults are faced with a miserable choice between seeking their fortune in a diminished labor market or obtaining an advanced credential that may qualify them for a more privileged sector of the same narrow and impoverished market where they must scramble frantically to auction off their ‘skills.’ Those who have chosen the latter option and walked through the doors of the casino of higher education (many pay, few win) face odds that steepen with every passing minute. Tuition and fees spiral ever higher; time-to-degree increases apace. Debt accumulates and the pressure to get ‘the job’ mounts. Most students work nearly full time to pay the bills while in school. As the anonymously-written “Communiqué from an Absent Future” aptly states: “We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobs we work toward are the jobs we already have.”

It is in this desperate context of debt, study, work, and uncertainty about the future that fee increases and salary cuts impact the students of California and the world. Every fee increase elicits a number of possible responses that can ultimately be reduced to two basic options: acquiescence or resistance. In some cases, out of inability or refusal to pay, students must abandon their studies and continue their resistance or submission to domination beyond the confines of the university. These comments are addressed to the students who remain.

Students face an uncomfortable choice: they can submit to the fee increases (which never stop increasing) or they can resist them. The reason this choice is uncomfortable is that it isn’t the kind of simple choice we are used to. It’s not a neat binary: McCain or Obama, ‘for here’ or ‘to go,’ Engineering or Psychology. It requires more than pressing a button on a Facebook poll or filling in a Scantron bubble. This is because the choice is not presented as a choice at all. The budget cuts and mismanagement, with their accompanying fee hikes and program eliminations are not presented as one option among several; they are presented as the way things are. Student input in these decisions is limited to a symbolic vote by the UC student regent, who recently demonstrated his courage by refusing to vote either for or against the 32% fee increase. The rest of us don’t have the luxury of abstention, however. We can either passively assent, or we can resist.

Resistance requires action, but this takes many forms, in part (and happily) because no ‘official’ channel of opposition exists. Sure, there are occasional polls whence easily manipulable statistics are derived, public fora which are open to five minutes of politely-worded questions from persons designated in advance, not to mention the ever-present possibility of sending a little email off to the spam folder of your state legislator. The belief that any of these ‘democratic’ processes has any influence on those who decide to raise fees and eliminate jobs is part of the logic of the spectacle, according to which ‘democracy’ is the free selection of preordained options. The university administration, in whom something like a class consciousness can be seen at work, is unified in presenting these false avenues as the only legitimate form of dissent. Protests are quickly denounced as criminal, destructive, and even as terrorism. The administration makes varied (sometimes clumsy, sometimes ingenious) attempts to divide students, even to the point of claiming that they arrest protestors out of a duty to protect the majority of students who are not protesting. That a majority of students are not protesting is certainly true enough, and perhaps regrettable, but it’s unclear why they need administrative protection. Have protestors attacked other students? Or is the administration protecting students’ right to pay an additional 32% in fees?

Only students’ passivity meets the criteria of authorized ‘dissent.’ Only students’ passivity allows the administration to appear benevolent. Every protest action has been met with police presence, persecution or arrests. Only action reveals clearly the lines between students, workers, and those who support them, and the apparatchiki who maintain the status quo with intimidation and force. Only action demonstrates the difference between students who resist and students who resist doing so out of fear, apathy or secret solidarity with the system. There are many who refuse to leave the roulette table lest they lose their chance at winning. But the ball on the wheel is, in fact, a bullet in the cylinder, and for every winner there is a loser. For every college graduate who obtains the golden parachute there is another who succumbs to debt, and there are many more who never make it through the casino doors. Those who cling to student life, refusing to rebel against it and what it represents, are often the most vociferous in their denunciation of the protestors. The protests, loud and indecorous, clash with the sensibilities of those who prefer to be lulled by the easy, false choices of the game, whose ludic nature has long since faded into a dull, compulsory and endless series of selections: red or black, hit or stay, call or fold. Make no mistake, these students’ passivity masks their hostility toward those who refuse to play the game any longer. The same students who now troll internet message boards to insult the protesters–many of whom, despite being portrayed by idiots as spoiled children, have made huge personal sacrifices to fight the callous dicta of administrators and lawmakers–are the same ones who will, in future confrontations, attack their fellow students alongside police. Students in the movement should harbor no illusions about the goodwill of those who claim to be part of the ‘silent majority,’ nor should they underestimate their unpopularity among anti-intellectuals who despise students merely for being what they themselves are not.

My statements here are intended as a call to action. This call is not coercive–from each, according to his (or her) ability. Our personal, economic, and physical situations are as diverse as we are. (I would not recommend, for instance, that an AB 540 student engage in civil disobedience or other actions which could provoke arrest.) Everyone has something to contribute, however. But this call is an injunction; it requires action or its opposite; it requires one to choose a side.

Solidarity is a fragile thing among students, especially in a university system as diverse as California’s. There are many divisive forces at work, besides those created by admins and cops. There are serious doctrinal differences among the protesters, as is to be expected of a movement that includes Marxists, anarchists, liberals, conservatives, queers, European Americans and students of color. No doubt some of these divisions will become permanent; in a fluid situation today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy. These fractures don’t mean, necessarily, the failure of the movement. Any movement worthy of the name contains internal tensions. In the end, though, the basic division will remain–between those who internalize oppression, forcing themselves to live within this form of society and to study in an increasingly corporate university, and those who refuse to acquiesce to this damaged life.

In the immortal words of Geddy Lee, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”