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On Thursday morning, I knew it was going to be a long day when the first fire alarm went off in the classroom building where I work. As the fire engine pulled up to the building, my eye followed its length and landed on a single word chalked on the back of the building: STRKE. Yes, without the i, because apparently there is no "I" in "strike."
Unfortunately, this mob mentality prevailed at the University of California, Davis, and what should have been a day of protest that evoked sympathy from the public turned into a day of juvenile pranks and actions that seemed to have no connection, literally or metaphorically, to the central concerns of the nationwide March 4 day of action in support of education.
I'm a huge supporter of public education. Let me show you my bona fides: My parents, and much of extended family, were or are public school teachers and administrators. With the exception of three years of my undergraduate education, I was educated entirely in public schools. Between 1998 and 2006, I earned three graduate degrees from UC Davis. I began teaching undergraduates at public universities in 1999. Since 2006, I have been on the staff at UC Davis, first in academic technology and now in its teaching center. In the fall, I'll become a history professor at Boise State University. In another year and a half, my son will head to public school as a kindergartner. I've invested myself—intellectually, professionally, emotionally, psychologically, and financially—in public education. I'm completely sympathetic on the core issues underlying protests on my campus and elsewhere.
It was with great dismay, then, that I watched the protests at the University of California once again go off the rails. At UC Davis, for example, we had protesters pulling fire alarms, spray-painting buildings with graffiti, and trying to close down Interstate 80 where it passes through campus. Those who were protesting the decline in quality of education spent the day disrupting students' learning by forcing evacuations of classroom buildings and libraries. I was particularly worried about the effect the false fire alarms had on students with disabilities, but I didn't see any marches using assistive devices or service animals, so perhaps such concerns never crossed the protesters' minds. Such juvenile actions didn't win outsiders over to the protesters' cause. For example, as Hazel Watson commented on the Davis Wiki,
The recent and apparently on-going behavior of the students is not endearing me to their cause. [. . .] These college students need to grow up, suck it up and start being part of the solution, not creating more problems.
Jeana Arter, a student at California State University, Northridge, was frustrated by what she viewed as protesters' myopia on her own campus:
Yesterday I was sitting in class listening to a lecture for an exam in two week. All of the sudden a group of girls with whistles and a loud speaker, open our class room door and tell us to walk out. I am angered mostly because these budget cuts have not only caused pay cuts in professors salaries but has decreased the number of class meetings. Therefore, I fail to see how disrupting an valuable class meeting proves a point. These students walked out of a class to protest the lack of classes. Furthermore, the state wide protest was to begin at 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. (this is still not clear) and these students were being disruptive at 11:00 a.m. I even had a woman in my class say to me,
I am not going to class (at 11:00 am) because I am protesting. But will you meet me at 12:15 (when our class ends) and share your notes with me?
Seriously?!!! For one a grown woman should have enough sense to partake in only organized protest that have the potential to make a difference. Second, do not ask for my notes. You made your uneducated choice so stick with it.
Jan in San Fran blogged about the protests, with a photographic focus on the younger participants rallying for K-12. She was disturbed by the media focus on the more sensational protesters' activities rather than the issues of the day:
Too much news coverage that I have seen focused more on a few photogenic incidents of disruption (and violent police response) than on the
