This morning, as I was making my way to the library through the crowded Sproul plaza, I encountered a large group of protesters. What looked like high school students and their teachers were passionately demonstrating against the SAT – the Scholastic Aptitude Test which determines admission for most American colleges. With chants like “Education not segregation / Integration not war” and the catchy “Hey hey / Hey ho / The SAT / has got to go”, they were energetically conveying the message: SAT measures privilege, not merit (as I read on a slightly more subtle sign one of the students was holding). I must admit, after having studied cultural reproduction theory for weeks, I enjoyed seeing Bourdieu’s theory [i] spelled out on a protest sign.
Returning home from the library I ran into yet another group of protesters: a gathering of Cal students who were holding speeches about the same topic that bothered the high school students. “Reverse the drop of underrepresented minority enrollment at UC Berkeley”, was their message. A police officer watched them from a distance, while his animal companion (“Morgan, a member of the UCPD Explosive detection K-9 Team” – reads the Collectable Trading Card which the officer handed me) entertained some bystanders.
Meanwhile, a hundred yards away, his/their colleagues were busy guarding the most recent ‘tree-site’ which has been ‘occupied’ by a tree-sitter two weeks ago. While, at the other end of campus several students have been ‘tree-sitting’ a giant Oak tree since August to prevent it from being cut down [ii], the most recent tree-sitter has a quite different motive. A masked guy who calls himself ‘Fresh’ proclaims to have occupied the tree to get attention for the university’s contract with BP oil, a contract which allegedly threatens UC Berkeley’s academic integrity [iii].
Ever since, the site has been guarded 24/7 by two police officers. The official story, as explained to me by a well-informed fellow student, is that the police are there to make sure that the protester is safe. At the same time – and perhaps the real reason for their presence – the police prevents ‘accomplices’ to provide the tree-sitter with water and food. (Last week two persons were arrested under charges of ‘suspicion of obstructing an officer’ after having flung bottles of water into the tree. [iv]) This ‘starvation strategy’ has yet to pay off. Up until now, the only effect seems to be just what the protester desired: attention. Two officers for himself, all the time. As I stroll home, stepping over the ‘Free Palestine’ stickers on the pavement, I find myself wondering what they talk about at night...
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[i] See, e.g. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QyTdmDIlKxwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA351&dq=bourdieu+forms+capital&ots=gNSS_aLnNz&sig=gSoXfcyH1pZC6Pzh2y3dAn6XPI4#PPA352,M1.
[ii] Both protest sites have been covered in great detail through youtube videos. For a look on the 'original' site, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiRY_A4E9Co&feature=related. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FZwUcoejWI&feature=related for some more spectacular (i.e. 'artistic') images. Here's some live action footage of the police's attempt to remove 'Fresh': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9ZdNA36ulI. And the 'accomplice' throwing water is shown to be arrested here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AZB396-_CU&feature=related.
[iii] See http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/24/60/ for an essay on the subject.
[iv] See http://www.dailycal.org/article/100803/two_arrested_after_rally_for_tree-sitter for the local news coverage.
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