By Monica Friedlander

 

A panel of Berkeley faculty members and politically active undergraduates came together last month to explore the role played by student activism and community involvement as part of the overarching academic and social experience on this campus. Sponsored by the College of Letters and Science, the Fall 2010 Colloquium on Undergraduate Education attracted an audience of students, faculty, staff and community members.

 

Perhaps the central question for the panelists was, are they? Historically, these hallmark legacies have operated largely on different tracks, with no one paying much attention to the degree to which they might intersect or enhance each other. The consensus of the colloquium participants was that they do indeed work in unison and that greater efforts should be made both to encourage students to become active beyond the classroom and to recognize the value of these efforts by incorporating some of them as part of the Berkeley curriculum.

 

To most people, Berkeley activism is associated first and foremost with the championing of partisan causes or political protests. This tradition, although somewhat muted compared to the activism of the past, is still very much alive and kicking, as evidenced by panel members representing such varied groups as CALPIRG (California Student Public Interest Group), Berkeley College Republicans, and the education movement, responsible for this year’s protests against university fee hikes.

 

To some students, activism is an opportunity to give members of various groups and minorities a sense of unity and representation in the larger campus community. “Our mission is to be a unifying voice for the community and act as liaison between the community and the university,” said Diamond Alexander, secretary for the Black Student Union.

 

To others yet, the concept of activism is much wider, and includes engagement in the community at large for any number of social causes. These efforts, panelists believe, need to be embraced by the university as a means to channel student passion and commitment into activities that have direct academic benefits for them.

 

One such effort is the recently-developed American Cultures Engaged Scholars Program, part of Berkeley’s American Cultures (AC) requirement.

 

“We are building on the idea of community-engaged scholarship,” said AC coordinator Victoria Robinson who decried what she described as the “two-horse race” at UC Berkeley. On one track, she says, are student activists whose interest is uncoupled from curriculum. On the other are those who can engage with the community through internships. “So how do we bridge that gap?” she asks. “It’s a gap of privilege and it’s a gap of access. The ACES program intends to build the idea of community-relations and partnership into the existing undergraduate curriculum.”

 

Partisan political causes may not be as easy to weave into the curriculum, but all panelists exhorted the great value of the experience acquired by students in the process of organizing and running campaigns.

 

“In my first semester I picked up every kind of skills, from how to plan a successful event to how to run a lobby meeting. These are not skills you learn in a classroom,” said Allie Cohen, a junior English major and co-coordinator of UC Berkeley CALPIRG and the “No on 23” proposition on the November ballot. “I’ve been conditioned to deal with every personality type in existence. And I’m way more informed politically than most of my peers.”

 

Mia Lincoln, an officer for Berkeley College Republicans, is especially proud of the success of her group here at Berkeley and of the fact that it can operate as an equal with all others on a campus known for its liberal political leanings.

 

“We’re discussing the role of the Tea Party in the Republican Party right here on the Berkeley campus — and no, not in a bullet-proof room down in the basement somewhere, but out in the open, where other students meet and can discuss and are part of this beautiful process that we have here on this campus.”

 

Lincoln also sees her role as that of engaging the more apathetic students in political discourse, regardless of their political leanings. She pointed out that despite Berkeley’s activist legacy, students are largely not engaged in the political process — only 30 percent of them actually vote.

 

“A lot of students become apolitical,” Lincoln says. “It’s hard for students to even want to hear about your cause, no matter which direction you’re coming from, because they’re so often bombarded by political activism on this campus. They have so many messages coming at them that they often shut them out. We need to reach out to these students about the need to be politically active and go out and vote and represent your beliefs.”

 

Ricardo Gomez, the external affairs vice president of the ASUC who is actively engaged in what he refers to as the education movement, pointed out that being active and politically engaged is about more than just casting a vote at the ballot box.

 

“Democracy isn’t just voting,” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of ways through which you engage with democracy: through your culture, through the beliefs you hold, choices you make in your lifestyles, things you buy, but most importantly, in the way you vote through your obedience and your time. What do you do when faced with injustice?”

 

Ultimately, all panelists agreed, activism is about fundamental values, and an academic institution must find ways to incorporate the development of such values as part of its curriculum.

 

Clare Talkwalker, a cultural anthropologist and vice chair of the Global Poverty and Practice Minor, discussed the importance of this minor’s requirement that students commit 200 hours of their time to an organization of their choice. She refers to this involvement — both here at home and in projects around the world — as “practice experience” rather than activism, given the broad range of motivations attracting students and the types of actions in which they choose to engage.

 

“We’d like to think of practice experience as an opportunity for students to develop the important skill of empathy,” she said, pointing to the fact that most students have never before come face to face with the kind of hardships they encounter as part of this program. “They learn from the people they partner with. They come to appreciate the experiential richness of people who are labeled as poor, who struggle with hardships in the world — hardships that our students are protected from.”

 

Ultimately this engagement in the world around us — whether it’s referred to as activism, community involvement, practice experience, or anything else — contributes to students’ skills, values, and ability to give something back to the university.

 

Referring to the American Cultures Engaged Scholars Program, Victoria Robinson noted: “Our curriculum actively reflects the real interests and needs of our community and meets our public mandate of public research for the public good for the state of California.”