The CSU Board of Trustees recently cancelled their December meeting. At the December meeting the Board was expected to consider recommendations regarding executive [read: campus presidents’] compensation. CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed and the Board approved large increases for campus presidents at San Diego State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo over the summer, and since then the Chancellor has been on a crusade to increase compensation for his other campus presidents.
At a Board meeting in November–during which the Board increased tuition once again–some attendees became unruly causing the Board to close the meeting, and voting for the tuition increase behind closed doors. In a letter distributed to CSU campuses the Chancellor claimed that:
…the protests became disruptive and resulted in personal injury to three California State University police officers and the arrest of four individuals. The glass entrance doors to the Chancellor’s Office were shattered. The damage to our building is estimated at $30,000.
His rant continued:
…demonstrations that turn disruptive and result in damage and injury are intolerable. The disrespect shown by several protestors was inexcusable.
The one issue that the Chancellor never seems to consider is this: Why? Why did the students turn to disruptive tactics? Why did the faculty choose to participate in a one day strike on November 17th, which he also referred to as a “disruption?”
Why people rebel has been the focus of students of politics for millenia. What students of rebellion agree on is this: Rebellion is not the first option of individuals; it is the last choice of people who feel that their grievances are not being taken seriously by political leaders.
Individuals are not likely to risk personal injury or arrest to promote collective interests except under the most dire of circumstances. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence understood that much:
…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Rebellion, revolution, protest, strikes: These are the last, desperate actions of individuals who are being ignored. It is not “hippies” and “troublemakers,” not “a few bad apples.”
Until the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees understand that protests and strikes are a symptom of a deeper dis-ease within the CSU, protests and strikes will continue to flare and even intensify. They will not become less destructive they will become more destructive.
Chancellor Reed, Trustee Hauck: Do not try to explain them away. That is not what effective leaders do.
Even the most casual student of American history knows that the Boston Tea Party–which was “disruptive” and led to “damage”–ended in the American Revolution. Why? Because King George failed to listen; he failed to hear and respond to the many, many grievances of the Colonials.
Repression also, ultimately, fails. Whether it is pepper spray or bullets and bombs, people rebel and win. Ask dictators like Mubarak, Gaddafhi, the Shah of Iran. Ask resistance leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr..
Chancellor Reed: CSU students, CSU faculty, CSU staff, the people of California are asking you, they are begging you to listen. You ignore their pleas at the great peril of the CSU.
