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For UCLA’s radicals, the days and
weeks leading up to March 5, 2003 had been entirely too calm. But
things
were about to change. As the clock struck 11:15 a.m., the campus
came
alive. Protesters roamed the halls, throwing open doors and screaming
exhortations to professors and students alike. Other lectures
were
interrupted by radicals who briefly attended classes in which they were
not
even enrolled, and then made symbolic – and disruptive -
exits.
This was the big day – the “National Moratorium to Stop the War on
Iraq,” in
which students would protest by walking out of their regularly
scheduled
classes. The protest’s student organizers watched the spreading
chaos
with a rush of pride. ... (more)
UCLA
student radicals had been organizing from the first time that the
Regents
discussed ending affirmative action. And
while they were sent reeling from SP-1 and SP-2, and suffered the
crushing blow
of Proposition 209, they just as quickly began to turn the tide.
On May 16, 2001, the
Diversitistas forced the symbolic repeal of SP-1, and quickly followed
that with their defining triumph, the November 15, 2001 passage of a
new “comprehensive review” admissions system. The process, still
ill-defined at the time of its passage, broke so many precedents that
its full effect would not be understood for many months. ... (more)
University of
California
Regent Ward Connerly did two utterly inexcusable things in his
lifetime.
He committed his first sin in 1995, when he
led the Regents in ending, throughout the UC system, affirmative action
in
admissions, hiring and contracting. He
sinned again the next year, spearheading the successful passage of
Proposition
209, which altered the California Constitution to outlaw affirmative
action in
all state business. Student radicals,
most with a personal stake in a system of racial preferences, were
outraged,
and expressed their displeasure in typical fashion – protests, building
takeovers, and violent confrontations at Regents meetings. ... (more)
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