[CW-Grad] Revision of CWPA letter to Chancellor

[Rachelle Cruz]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your feedback and support, regarding our letter to
Chancellor White.

Please take a minute to reread it.  Please let us know if there is anything
we should add/edit/revise.

If you want your name added to the letter, let us know!...That goes for
students, staff and faculty!

Best,
Rachelle

***

January 22, 2012

Dear Chancellor White,

As graduate students and teaching assistants in the MFA Program for
Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, we are deeply
disappointed by the actions taken by the University this past Thursday.

We participated in the campus-wide action comprised of UC students,
faculty, and staff outside of the HUB, while the UC Regents continued their
meeting in privacy.  This day-long action was indeed an expression of
outrage over rising tuition and depreciating quality of education.  It was
also a celebration of community and solidarity.

We witnessed our students chanting or engaging in discussions about the
grim future of UC Riverside; for many of them, this was their first
political protest.  One of our students, a mother of two, brought her
three-year-old daughter.  This student lamented forgetting to dress her
daughter in her Highlander shirt.  She wanted her daughter to bear witness
to the fight for her future education.

We witnessed UCR students and community members dressed in black, bearing
colorful, lifesize banners depicting the book covers of liberatory texts.
 These books envision equality and freedom and question privilege and
cultural hegemony, such as Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, bell
hooks’ Feminism is for Everyone, Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy for the
Oppressed, among
others.  The book bloc remained at the front of the line, protecting
protesters as they faced the staggering number of riot police at the HUB
exit.  We couldn’t help but recognize the clear metaphor in all of this.

Despite what your Friday Letter states, there were more than just a “few”
individuals at this action.  We witnessed hundreds of students, faculty,
and staff who merely wanted to engage in an open discussion with the UC
Regents.  As police helicopters circled above us, we witnessed our students
(your students) pushed, shoved and humiliated by riot police because of
this desire to converse and be heard by the Regents.  We witnessed members
of our community shot by police officers with paint pellet guns; one young
man was knocked to the ground by the shock and force of these pellets.  We
witnessed sheer violence by your “co-workers,” the police who, instead of
marching around the students to take their positions, marched directly
through the crowd as if they wanted to incite the kind of riot they were
brought in to quell.

However, in your Friday Letter you failed to acknowledge the many injuries
that UCPD and several outside law enforcement agencies inflicted upon your
students, injuries that were also ignored by many major news outlets. We
believe that UCR students deserve an explanation and an apology.

The “few individuals” who peacefully disrupted the UC Regents Meeting
represent more than a handful of marginal opinions.  These “few
individuals” exercised an essential act of civil disobedience and represent
many of us in the UC Riverside and UC community who are fed up with
business as usual.

We urge you to provide opportunities for students to engage in dialogue,
such as a public forum, about last Thursday’s events and the implications
behind police presence as the University’s response to student assembly and
protest.  We urge you to take responsibility for putting your students’
safety on the line.  We urge you to ensure their safety and right to
express their discontent with the UC system by supporting future student
actions.

Sincerely,

Rachelle Cruz, CWPA graduate student
Andrea Gutierrez, CWPA graduate student
Angel Garcia, CWPA graduate student
David Campos, CWPA graduate student
Sara Borjas, CWPA graduate student
Courtney Lund, CWPA graduate student
Melody Kowach, CWPA graduate student
Tanya Frank, CWPA graduate student
Kamala Puligandla, CWPA graduate student
Ryan Peckinpaugh, CWPA graduate student
Joe Powers, CWPA alum
V Zamora, CWPA alum


*****
Rachelle Cruz,
Host of "The Blood-Jet Writing Hour" Radio Show
www.thebloodjet.wordpress.com
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