Tent U Santa Cruz: a chance to win in the face of repression

Activist networks in the U.S. and around the world were buzzing on the morning of April 19 with the news that 19 people were brutally arrested the night before at Tent University Santa Cruz. Tent U, an experiment in "liberated education," has captured the interest of thousands of students while creating fright and paranoia among UC administrators who, in the words of one well-connected UCSC faculty member, are afraid that "the torch-carrying hordes are coming to raze UCSC to the ground." Hours after a UCSC student posted a six-minute video of the arrests to his personal homepage, over 60,000 people flocked to the site and crashed the server.

In many respects, Tent U fell short of its goal of creating a dynamic, weeklong alternative educational setting. The daytime workshops and activities had poor attendance and were not ethnically diverse. For the most part, the event lacked the festive mood most of the organizers had intended. Also, the UC administration largely succeeded in repressing the formation of a vibrant camping community. Hundreds of people signed up in advance to camp, but only 30-50 actually set up tents during the 3 makeshift camping nights at UCSC’s Quarry Amphitheater.

On the other hand, Tent U was successful beyond anyone’s wildest expectations by bringing to the forefront countless vital issues that previously had only been bubbling below the surface of the UCSC community’s discussion palate. Since Tent U, thousands of conversations have taken place concerning such issues as manifestations of racism and patriarchy in campus organizing (particularly, the organizing process of Tent U), faculty discontent regarding UC administrative policies and practices, the realities of police brutality in oppressed communities, and the heavy-handedness of the UCSC administration.

Tent U also succeeded remarkably well in dramatizing the fundamental concern the event was designed to address: that student fee increases, the lack of a living wage for campus workers, the lack of diversity in UC, and other such injustices on campus stem directly from the nature of the UC system whose function is to maintain and reinforce an oppressive, disempowering and tremendously destructive status quo in society at large.

The order by UCSC administrators under pressure from the UC Office of the President officials to forcibly evict the Tent U community on April 18th provided a visceral demonstration of this oppression, thereby acting to politicize a significant number of students not only at UCSC but throughout the UC system. For its part, UCSC’s student population – mostly white, mostly middle class – is quite angry about what, for many of them, was their first direct experience with police brutality.

The power of the Tent U organizing effort and grassroots student mobilizations in general, becomes apparent by tracking the ever-shifting rhetoric of UCSC administrators since the Tent U organizing process began. Chancellor Denise Denton has already made several concessions to Tent U organizers who, with assistance from a strongly-worded letter signed by over 200 UCSC faculty members, are pressuring her to meet the demands of the Tent U platform. Recently, she dropped charges against organizers and has promised to respond publicly to the other platform items.

In contrast, Denton’s stance prior to Tent U is best characterized by a remarkable press release issued by her office, published on the UCSC web site and now removed, stating that “If plans for erecting a 'tent university' proceed, the university will enforce all relevant university policies and will apply maximum sanctions against violators.” Other UCSC administrators repeatedly invoked threats of suspension, expulsion, and arrest in meetings with organizers and in various letters to organizers, students, faculty, and staff prior to the event.

Their tactics created a climate of fear and subjugation surrounding Tent U that clearly dissuaded many people from participating. It also resulted in a unique and improbable organizing opportunity for Tent University Santa Cruz (TUSC). During the week leading up to the event, TUSC organizers publicized the administration’s threats extensively, attempting to frame it within the original message context of Tent U which was, after all, created to higlight the oppressiveness of the UC system.

Direct action exists in several varieties. An example of “direct action at the point of production” — in this case, the production of knowledge — is the blockade of the entrances leading to campus that occurred during the UCSC workers’ strike on April 14th.

The April 18th civil disobedience at Tent U was an example of “direct action at the point of assumption”, an idea propagated by SmartMeme Training Strategy founder Patrick Reinsborough. According to Reinsborough, “Successful direct action at the point of assumption identifies, isolates and confronts the big lies… A worthy goal for these types of actions is to encourage the most important act that a concerned citizen can take in an era defined by systematic propaganda – questioning!”

Why did the UCSC administration import riot police from UC Berkeley to join its own police force in strangling, mangling the arms and violently dispersing 19 peaceful protesters, smashing numerous bystanders with clubs in the process? Why, as a crowd of at least 300 people gathered, did the administration suddenly order these arrests to be halted?

How did Tent U relate to other social change efforts on campus? How does this incident reflect the nature of UCSC as an institution? These are some of many questions that Santa Cruz students, faculty, staff, community members, and other onlookers have been asking themselves ever since April 18th.

Essentially, Tent U acted to shatter the assumption that UC is a tolerant haven for the expression of free dissent.

In the face of considerable repression, the Tent U community persevered to conduct a week of workshops, classes, and countless discussions. Roughly 100 people out of the 500-1,000 who attended at least some part of the week’s festivities contributed directly to the democratic creation of the Tent U political platform.

Tent U, along with the original Tent State University at Rutgers University and the Tent State University, University of Missouri, has helped to inspire similar initiatives at other campuses including the University of Texas and the University of Colorado. By now the TUSC arrest video has likely received 500,000-1,000,000 downloads. The ultimate success of the event will be determined by how effectively its organizers parlay widespread interest in the police brutality incident into a sustained campaign that is well-integrated with other campus struggles for long-term social change.

Mahatma Gandhi once summed up the standard cycle of elite response to grassroots mobilizations, “First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, and then we win.” The UCSC administration fought us, and now is our chance to win.

FOR MORE INFO ON TENT U:
visit www.tentstate.com/ucsc.
E-mail the author at wparrish@napf.org