Pop your Bubble!
It’s 10 AM. I’ve got my headphones in listening to music I just discovered last week. I’m on my way to class in Evans Hall and should be able to make it on time — because of Berkeley time of course. I’ll occasionally glance at the buildings around me so I have a sense of where I am. Walking through Sproul Plaza, I see a bunch of organizations trying to promote their causes or events, but I pay no attention to them because I’m content in my bubble.
This is a normal schedule for me — I walk past Sproul Hall, Sather Gate, and Free Speech Movement Cafe everyday. Sure, I’ve heard of the importance of these locations whether it was on a campus tour or just researching Berkeley online, but I don’t usually appreciate the importance of these locations, nor do I feel a need to. I’ve seen the pictures of Mario Savio delivering his poignant speeches on Sproul and the thousands of students walking through Sather Gate while carrying an enormous “Free Speech” signs, but I’m not exactly going to step back and fathom the significance of these locations on a daily basis because I haven’t paid much attention to what happened in these locations.
However, reading Mario Savio’s essay on the Berkeley Student Rebellion of 1964 has reminded me about the importance of Berkeley during the Civil Rights movement and how it set a precedent for other political movements in the Bay Area and even America as a whole.
Imagine if UC Berkeley students weren’t able to spread political ideas on Sproul Plaza. Crazy right? It’s UC Berkeley! Yet, this is exactly what the University mandated after heavy UC Berkeley student involvement in the Freedom Summer movement. According to Savio, “radical students are a mean threat to privilege and because students were advocating consequential actions, the administration’s restrictive ruling was necessary.”
As Savio describes, this decision by administration was just a part of a growing trend of UC Berkeley to deny students the possibility of “being a student.” He describes schools as training camps meant to “produce technicians rather than places to live student lives.” President Clark Kerr’s model of mass education led to a situation in which only disciplines that had a ready market in industry or government were fostered and naturally humanities suffered. The university was trying to dictate what students said, learned, and thought.
The University’s actions directly caused dissatisfaction among students, which is why these mostly middle class students got involved in the civil rights movement, a movement that initially only concerned the struggles of black people. People like Savio had to come to terms with what the First Amendment really meant. If the First Amendment only protected speech that didn’t challenge the mainstream views, then did the amendment actually protect free speech? Was free speech really free? Thus, the free speech movement was born — “it demanded no more — nor less — than full First Amendment rights of advocacy on campus as well as off: that therefore, only the courts have power to determine and punish abuses of freedom of speech.”
As students at this famed institution that has never shied away from discourse, we have a duty to promote free speech and understand the importance of places we walk by everyday. Instead of hiding behind the walls of censorship and seeking comfort only in our preferred bubbles, we need to break free, exploring whole new worlds of perspectives that will allow us to grow as people. Sure there are the politically active conservative and liberal students who regularly voice their opinions on campus, but they are far outnumbered by politically apathetic students. I was also a part of this large majority, but being exposed to this countercultures class has really got me thinking about how possible it is to make a difference in issues that are relevant to me by staying vocal and involved in the political process. Berkeley students wouldn’t be able to protest freely if it wasn’t for students from the sixties — that’s why it’s our duty to carry on Savio’s legacy and set an example for our generation and generations to comes.
