March 4th — the Day of Action

Tomorrow is a big day for UCSD for two reasons.

One.

March 4th was the date decided back in November as the gigantic, nationwide March Forth/4th Day of Action. California’s severe budget crisis has led to all kinds of cut-backs and fee hikes for the UC system. Personally I’ve felt the effect of the tightening budget because the media methods class I was very excited about taking next quarter was cancelled — the reason given by the department? “Sorry, we just don’t have the funding.” Sigh :( Tomorrow, protests and rallies are scheduled all over California, with several universities across the nation also rallying in solidarity for public education.

Two.

There has been a lot of racial tension on campus due to all the events that have occurred on and off campus in the last few weeks, with protests happening [what feels like] almost every other day.

The Black Student Union of UCSD presented the Chancellor with a list of demands. She has until March 4th to respond. Tomorrow, a stage and a PA system will be set-up by the BSU on Library Walk and the Chancellor, all the Vice-Chancellors, and the Academic Senate Representatives are expected to speak.

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I think a lot of students are confused about tomorrow. Many students at UCSD think it’s solely about the recent racial rift. Let’s take a minute and go on a social media tangent. Whatever your reasons are for protesting, you’re protesting because you want to call attention to your cause. SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY to use new/social media to your advantage! Get your message out there, disseminate information quickly, and most importantly, educate others on WHY you’re protesting.

Whatever you’re protesting for tomorrow, good luck. I’ll see you on Library Walk. :)

I’d like to take a minute now to point out a post that my friend and fellow Triton, Tricia Wang, wrote about using the hash tag #UCSDRACISM:

triciawang:

A lot of my friends who work in the media world have been looking for pictures and videos of students protesting the racist acts that have taken place at UCSD - however, they haven’t been able to find much evidence of this.

I believe that a lot of UCSD students and faculty are taking pictures and vidoes, but they aren’t posting them to publicly searchable sites online, rather they are just posting them to facebook.

We need more people documenting protests and organized events by posting our pictures/videos online and tagging them “UCSDRACISM.”

I’ve written a sample email that you can pass onto your friends, students, and colleagues via email and facebook.

And I’ve also created a flyer (4-pane) that can be printed and passed out to your students and colleagues. The flyer is also available for download here: http://bit.ly/ucsdracism4 ). I encourage us to all print and distribute these during the March 4th protest.

If we want to pressure the UC Regents to make institutional changes in response to these racist events, then we need more media coverage of how this is affecting students/faculty and how students/faculty are reacting to this. The UC is more likely to respond when its very own institutional image is at stake with a wider public. We can help out by making sure that images reflecting how students/faculty are responding to these events are readily available and accessible to media outlets and bloggers.