sign at the bottom of the pic says:
ciencias en TOMA
My school -- la universidad de chile -- has been on strike for more than two weeks now. Before I allow myself to make any commentary on that, I have to admit that this is part of the reason that I chose to go to la U instead of the catholic university -- both options offered by EAP. Aside from wanting to go to the university that was said to be more diverse socioeconomically, I thought it would be fascinating to experience a student strike.
If you ask my mom why she drinks her tea without sugar, she'll always tell you that back when she was getting her masters in social work, her school was always on strike. So she would spend day after day hanging out at the campus canteen with her friends drinking chai and samosas, and eventually decided that the sugar was making her fat. Since a spoonful of sugar gives you about 15 calories, I always concluded that my mom's school must have been on strike a LOT. She said it was always boring. On a somewhat related note, her brother was into student government and often was the organizer of said strikes, at a different university. (I think, although I never remember where any of my relatives went to school...) Anyways, I am starting to agree with my mom.
It was very interesting for about a week and a half. The issues that are debated are interesting and have plenty of parallels to our own higher education system in California, but what I've enjoyed even more is seeing the process of how everyone organizes. Their system is much more democratic than ours. The student leaders make very few decisions, almost everything goes to vote in assemblies of the whole facultad. And it's interesting because it's one of the few moments I've had here in Chile where I've really seen the differences between here and the states. This would NEVER happen in California, partly because only a small minority is interested enough in the future of education, partly because a student strike would not be an accepted or effective form of mobilization, but mostly because holy shit something like a take-over of campus could never happen without the appearance of a single police car. There's like, no legal liability! No one really cares that fire codes are being broken! No one cares that the room where the strikers keep their food occasionally has dogs! I think this is kind of cool because I think (to an extent) that all that stuff is the result of paranoia anyways.
Let me try to give some kind of simplified background on this strike. First of all, some high schools in Chile starting striking a couple days before the casa central (main admin building of the univ.) was taken over, and my campus followed a few days later. These are all part of an ongoing struggle against the privatization of education in Chile. All over the city you'll see graffitied "NO AL LUCRO EDUCACIONAL". Lucro means profit. More specifically, my campus, which includes ciencias, ciencias sociales, filosofia y humanidades, and part of artes, is trying to get the government and administration to retract this bicentennial renovation plan. The plan is crap and I am in total agreement with the students who are against it. They want to put in a central library and dining hall. And renovate the bathrooms. Um, hello? There are not enough CLASSROOMS at this school. When the professors schedule midterms, they pick a date, come back to class and say there were no rooms available, and pick a new date. It's such a hassle. Also, these renovations (among other parts of the plan) are going to be half funded by the state and half by the university, potentially raising tuition. Which is already super-high when you compare it to the average income and consider that this is a public university. The possibly even stupider part of this plan is to restructure the science majors. There are currently 8. They want to make 3, and make them 2-year programs, after which you could study more and specialize. I have no idea whose idea this was or how they justify it, but it is completely idiotic, especially because the studying afterwards would not be considered undergraduate and thus it would be harder to obtain (already minimal) financial aid.
So at first I was all whoo, strike, fuck plan bicentenario, and while i wasn't voting at the assemblies and i consider myself an outsider/observer, i had a clear side chosen.
Then things went sour. And I am pretty much annoyed with anyone who has set foot in the facultad de ciencias in the past week.
I still admire the people who are actually doing something with this whole strike thing -- you know, those who are researching the issues, and going to the negotiotion tables with the deans, and monitoring the assemblies, and updating the blog of the facultad so that the student body is well-informed, and all that jazz.
I don't admire the 100+ people who voted yes and never showed up once to help with anything. If you vote for your school to go on strike, you are voting for all your classmates to not have class or library access despite the fact that their families might be making huge sacrifices to pay tuition, despite the fact that they might be freshmen making a hellish transition to a prestigious university from a mediocre or worse public school, etc. I think this might be fine if you're really really invested in the issue behind the strike, if you're actively DOING something every day to further its cause. But if you're just wearing a t-shirt that states your beliefs and coming by campus to listen to the assemblies and help clean up a little and then play cards and watch movies in the lecture halls at night...well, I dunno. That doesn't really legitimize the disruption of class. And if you're disobeying the dry campus rule and partying, then you're just giving everyone a bad name. And if you're sitting at home and you voted yes, don't. even. get. me. started.
And I don't admire the students who don't show up to vote and then complain complain complain that we are still on strike. And I don't admire the professors who make ridiculous comments like "I think you should support the plan bicentenario regardless of its funding source because i am embarassed to take foreign colleagues to the bathrooms here" or comparing the strikers to the pinochet regime or other dumb such things. These are a small minority of course. And I don't admire the condescendingness of the people involved to the students who just want to study and who don't see this strike as effective. I don't know if its effective or not, I sure hope it is, but everyone keeps assuming that those who are antistrike are just indifferent to the future of education. But maybe they're just annoyed because they paid 2000$ and the dean still gets a full salary but they have to teach themselves 3 weeks of material. Starts to seem ironic, all that graffitied "No al lucro educacional!"
For the record I'm ambivalent my only conclusion is that this whole thing is messy messy messy. And people should stop making ridiculous "bicentennial" plans.
If you ask my mom why she drinks her tea without sugar, she'll always tell you that back when she was getting her masters in social work, her school was always on strike. So she would spend day after day hanging out at the campus canteen with her friends drinking chai and samosas, and eventually decided that the sugar was making her fat. Since a spoonful of sugar gives you about 15 calories, I always concluded that my mom's school must have been on strike a LOT. She said it was always boring. On a somewhat related note, her brother was into student government and often was the organizer of said strikes, at a different university. (I think, although I never remember where any of my relatives went to school...) Anyways, I am starting to agree with my mom.
It was very interesting for about a week and a half. The issues that are debated are interesting and have plenty of parallels to our own higher education system in California, but what I've enjoyed even more is seeing the process of how everyone organizes. Their system is much more democratic than ours. The student leaders make very few decisions, almost everything goes to vote in assemblies of the whole facultad. And it's interesting because it's one of the few moments I've had here in Chile where I've really seen the differences between here and the states. This would NEVER happen in California, partly because only a small minority is interested enough in the future of education, partly because a student strike would not be an accepted or effective form of mobilization, but mostly because holy shit something like a take-over of campus could never happen without the appearance of a single police car. There's like, no legal liability! No one really cares that fire codes are being broken! No one cares that the room where the strikers keep their food occasionally has dogs! I think this is kind of cool because I think (to an extent) that all that stuff is the result of paranoia anyways.
Let me try to give some kind of simplified background on this strike. First of all, some high schools in Chile starting striking a couple days before the casa central (main admin building of the univ.) was taken over, and my campus followed a few days later. These are all part of an ongoing struggle against the privatization of education in Chile. All over the city you'll see graffitied "NO AL LUCRO EDUCACIONAL". Lucro means profit. More specifically, my campus, which includes ciencias, ciencias sociales, filosofia y humanidades, and part of artes, is trying to get the government and administration to retract this bicentennial renovation plan. The plan is crap and I am in total agreement with the students who are against it. They want to put in a central library and dining hall. And renovate the bathrooms. Um, hello? There are not enough CLASSROOMS at this school. When the professors schedule midterms, they pick a date, come back to class and say there were no rooms available, and pick a new date. It's such a hassle. Also, these renovations (among other parts of the plan) are going to be half funded by the state and half by the university, potentially raising tuition. Which is already super-high when you compare it to the average income and consider that this is a public university. The possibly even stupider part of this plan is to restructure the science majors. There are currently 8. They want to make 3, and make them 2-year programs, after which you could study more and specialize. I have no idea whose idea this was or how they justify it, but it is completely idiotic, especially because the studying afterwards would not be considered undergraduate and thus it would be harder to obtain (already minimal) financial aid.
So at first I was all whoo, strike, fuck plan bicentenario, and while i wasn't voting at the assemblies and i consider myself an outsider/observer, i had a clear side chosen.
Then things went sour. And I am pretty much annoyed with anyone who has set foot in the facultad de ciencias in the past week.
I still admire the people who are actually doing something with this whole strike thing -- you know, those who are researching the issues, and going to the negotiotion tables with the deans, and monitoring the assemblies, and updating the blog of the facultad so that the student body is well-informed, and all that jazz.
I don't admire the 100+ people who voted yes and never showed up once to help with anything. If you vote for your school to go on strike, you are voting for all your classmates to not have class or library access despite the fact that their families might be making huge sacrifices to pay tuition, despite the fact that they might be freshmen making a hellish transition to a prestigious university from a mediocre or worse public school, etc. I think this might be fine if you're really really invested in the issue behind the strike, if you're actively DOING something every day to further its cause. But if you're just wearing a t-shirt that states your beliefs and coming by campus to listen to the assemblies and help clean up a little and then play cards and watch movies in the lecture halls at night...well, I dunno. That doesn't really legitimize the disruption of class. And if you're disobeying the dry campus rule and partying, then you're just giving everyone a bad name. And if you're sitting at home and you voted yes, don't. even. get. me. started.
And I don't admire the students who don't show up to vote and then complain complain complain that we are still on strike. And I don't admire the professors who make ridiculous comments like "I think you should support the plan bicentenario regardless of its funding source because i am embarassed to take foreign colleagues to the bathrooms here" or comparing the strikers to the pinochet regime or other dumb such things. These are a small minority of course. And I don't admire the condescendingness of the people involved to the students who just want to study and who don't see this strike as effective. I don't know if its effective or not, I sure hope it is, but everyone keeps assuming that those who are antistrike are just indifferent to the future of education. But maybe they're just annoyed because they paid 2000$ and the dean still gets a full salary but they have to teach themselves 3 weeks of material. Starts to seem ironic, all that graffitied "No al lucro educacional!"
For the record I'm ambivalent my only conclusion is that this whole thing is messy messy messy. And people should stop making ridiculous "bicentennial" plans.
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