by David Hoffman
A few minutes before the zero hour, people begin to stir in the large lecture hall. I look around nervously. I want to go to the protest at noon, but that would involve standing up and walking out of class, which is exactly what the organizers have called for. My feelings are mixed, and I'm not sure what I will do. I want to see the action. I want to stand for justice. But I don't feel close enough to the cause of the protest to claim it as my own. Such a big gesture would seem vaguely fraudulent. I'm just an anonymous freshman, cautious, unsure. The activists who have been visibly involved to this point seem to be operating with vastly greater assurance and passion than I feel. They seem full of concern for the victims of injustice, and driven by righteous rage on their behalf. I find their intensity alluring and repellent at the same time. I want to feel just as deeply, and because I don't, I wonder whether their passion can truly run as deep as it appears, or whether they just wish they could be involved in something big, a cause as stark and important as those of U.S. civil rights heroes from decades past.
People start to stand up. I hesitate. But when my T.A. stands and shoulders his pack, I feel safe enough to follow, and join the stream of students heading to the rear of the hall. Minutes later I find a spot on the outskirts of a crowd of 2,000 people near the heart of UCLA's campus, and watch the Student Body President and other speakers address the cause: apartheid (a system of legal oppression of blacks by whites) in South Africa, and the University of California's investments in companies doing business there. The purpose of the protest is to demand that the university to divest (sell off) its South Africa-tainted holdings, in order to put pressure on the oppressive government to abandon the apartheid system. When some of the protest leaders move to occupy part of the administration building, I walk away, recognizing that they have crossed a line I feel I cannot, and wondering again about their motives and the source of their capacity to act on love and anger. The date is April 23, 1985.
Fast forward more than a year, to July 18, 1986. Activists have built shantytowns on University of California campuses to dramatize conditions for black South Africans, and repeatedly have pressed their case to the university's Board of Regents, which has rejected proposals for divestment. But the activists have succeeded in shifting the politics of the issue. This time, when the divestment question comes to a vote of the Regents, they prevail, 13-9. I am one of the 13; the vote takes place at my first meeting as the Board's student member. I'm proud of this, but also well aware that I have done little to earn the glory of the moment. In the coming months other universities also will decide to divest, and will contribute to the international effort that ultimately will bring down the apartheid regime.
Fast forward more than 26 years, to the week before last: I am sitting at the front of a room full of UCLA students, part of an all-day conference. The students are mired in the everyday messiness of pursuing positive changes on campus and in the wider world. They have a lot of questions, but what seems to lie behind them is wanting the assurance that what they are doing is meaningful. The issues they face involve (as always) race relations, fair access to education, and social justice. To my surprise, they want to know what it was like to have been involved in the great and successful fight for divestment, which appears to occupy the same space in their imagination that the Civil Rights Movement had in mine. Walking in the shadow of a past they envision as pure and stark in its emotional imperatives, they seem to yearn to contribute to causes and actions equally big and bold, and to tap and harness their empathy, and perhaps their anger.
To my left sits John Sarvey, who, like me, served as a UCLA Student Body President and pursued a career in higher education that has allowed him to do a lot of work with student leaders. John and I started as freshmen the same year. I never knew it, but he too was at the big divestment protest in spring 1985. He shares with the students what he felt that day: ambivalence. As it turns out, John hovered at the outskirts of the crowd, and tried to wrap his head around the motives and emotions of the activist leaders, and to understand what they signified for him. Just like me. Even after all this time, it's stirring to hear someone else voice these thoughts, especially given that John has devoted himself passionately to various causes in the years since. Just like the students in the room, I'm sifting through the meanings, processing the implications.
In a few hours, at a gathering of the living former Student Body Presidents, I will talk with the president who led the 1985 protest, and let her know that her actions sent ripples forward in time to inspire and provoke a new generation of student leaders. After 27 years, I find I'm swimming in new lessons from that long-ago day.
Fast forward to today: John Sarvey passed away yesterday at age 45, leaving behind his wife and two children. My mind is reeling. The meanings I made of the divestment protest, and the session with UCLA's student leaders, and the gathering of former Student Body Presidents are all in flux, all being reshaped again by my knowledge of their place in John's story. I see no resolution, no stable point where ambivalence, and love, and righteous anger, and the convergence of present and past all fit neatly into a narrative with an outcome and a moral. I only know that we are all vulnerable, all incomplete, and must strive with imperfect foresight and hindsight to find our causes and make our contributions.
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
A few minutes before the zero hour, people begin to stir in the large lecture hall. I look around nervously. I want to go to the protest at noon, but that would involve standing up and walking out of class, which is exactly what the organizers have called for. My feelings are mixed, and I'm not sure what I will do. I want to see the action. I want to stand for justice. But I don't feel close enough to the cause of the protest to claim it as my own. Such a big gesture would seem vaguely fraudulent. I'm just an anonymous freshman, cautious, unsure. The activists who have been visibly involved to this point seem to be operating with vastly greater assurance and passion than I feel. They seem full of concern for the victims of injustice, and driven by righteous rage on their behalf. I find their intensity alluring and repellent at the same time. I want to feel just as deeply, and because I don't, I wonder whether their passion can truly run as deep as it appears, or whether they just wish they could be involved in something big, a cause as stark and important as those of U.S. civil rights heroes from decades past.
People start to stand up. I hesitate. But when my T.A. stands and shoulders his pack, I feel safe enough to follow, and join the stream of students heading to the rear of the hall. Minutes later I find a spot on the outskirts of a crowd of 2,000 people near the heart of UCLA's campus, and watch the Student Body President and other speakers address the cause: apartheid (a system of legal oppression of blacks by whites) in South Africa, and the University of California's investments in companies doing business there. The purpose of the protest is to demand that the university to divest (sell off) its South Africa-tainted holdings, in order to put pressure on the oppressive government to abandon the apartheid system. When some of the protest leaders move to occupy part of the administration building, I walk away, recognizing that they have crossed a line I feel I cannot, and wondering again about their motives and the source of their capacity to act on love and anger. The date is April 23, 1985.
Fast forward more than a year, to July 18, 1986. Activists have built shantytowns on University of California campuses to dramatize conditions for black South Africans, and repeatedly have pressed their case to the university's Board of Regents, which has rejected proposals for divestment. But the activists have succeeded in shifting the politics of the issue. This time, when the divestment question comes to a vote of the Regents, they prevail, 13-9. I am one of the 13; the vote takes place at my first meeting as the Board's student member. I'm proud of this, but also well aware that I have done little to earn the glory of the moment. In the coming months other universities also will decide to divest, and will contribute to the international effort that ultimately will bring down the apartheid regime.
Fast forward more than 26 years, to the week before last: I am sitting at the front of a room full of UCLA students, part of an all-day conference. The students are mired in the everyday messiness of pursuing positive changes on campus and in the wider world. They have a lot of questions, but what seems to lie behind them is wanting the assurance that what they are doing is meaningful. The issues they face involve (as always) race relations, fair access to education, and social justice. To my surprise, they want to know what it was like to have been involved in the great and successful fight for divestment, which appears to occupy the same space in their imagination that the Civil Rights Movement had in mine. Walking in the shadow of a past they envision as pure and stark in its emotional imperatives, they seem to yearn to contribute to causes and actions equally big and bold, and to tap and harness their empathy, and perhaps their anger.
To my left sits John Sarvey, who, like me, served as a UCLA Student Body President and pursued a career in higher education that has allowed him to do a lot of work with student leaders. John and I started as freshmen the same year. I never knew it, but he too was at the big divestment protest in spring 1985. He shares with the students what he felt that day: ambivalence. As it turns out, John hovered at the outskirts of the crowd, and tried to wrap his head around the motives and emotions of the activist leaders, and to understand what they signified for him. Just like me. Even after all this time, it's stirring to hear someone else voice these thoughts, especially given that John has devoted himself passionately to various causes in the years since. Just like the students in the room, I'm sifting through the meanings, processing the implications.
In a few hours, at a gathering of the living former Student Body Presidents, I will talk with the president who led the 1985 protest, and let her know that her actions sent ripples forward in time to inspire and provoke a new generation of student leaders. After 27 years, I find I'm swimming in new lessons from that long-ago day.
Fast forward to today: John Sarvey passed away yesterday at age 45, leaving behind his wife and two children. My mind is reeling. The meanings I made of the divestment protest, and the session with UCLA's student leaders, and the gathering of former Student Body Presidents are all in flux, all being reshaped again by my knowledge of their place in John's story. I see no resolution, no stable point where ambivalence, and love, and righteous anger, and the convergence of present and past all fit neatly into a narrative with an outcome and a moral. I only know that we are all vulnerable, all incomplete, and must strive with imperfect foresight and hindsight to find our causes and make our contributions.
Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.
