so, within the past week, there has been a strike, a tent univeristy, a walk-out, and 420. omg.. i keep forgetting that santa cruz is full of hippies. and then weeks like this come up and i say "oh, yeah. santa cruz is hippieful"...
the strike was about union workers not getting a pay raise in 2ish years and not being paid a living wage. which i kind of agree with except for the fact that most dishwashers don't make a living wage anyways. the strike was for clerical workers, janitorial, and others. the city buses had a sympathy strike and didn't cross the picket lines. the shuttle busses on campus didn't run b/c they were also doing a sympathy strike or were a part of the strike. i'm unclear on this. in any case, they weren't running either. so if you wanted to go to class, you'd take the bus to the base of campus and walk to class. i don't know if you know about ucsc's landscape but it's a mountain. a big, huge, hike through the wilderness type of school. NOT FUN. and the dining halls were closed, the libraries, basically the whole school. my professor said that i could email her and say that i support the strike and she'd excuse us. so i emailed her and stayed home. hee! here's an article about it
the tent university is very unclear on why their doing it. what are they protesting? i don't know. they just have tents set up at the base of campus. which is why the police came at 10pm to arrest them. there's even a video. here's an article about it and http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~afrojas/TU thing is, all the hippies cried police brutallity. when really, they did pressure point things for them to pass out and arrest the people. there was no batton. and the worst injury anyone would get are bruises from the pressure points and such. the school told them that if they were on the base of campus, they would be arrested. but the base of campus is considered city land ad you can't camp on city land. if they had listened to the school, they could have moved it to any part of campus and not gotten arrested. their stupidity. there are some classes that were held at tent university. WHO ARE THESE HIPPIE PROFESSORS??
and today there's a walk-out. i think it's to stop budget cuts. apparently is a state-wide walk-out. but the walk out is scheduled for noon and i don't have a class at noon. what am i going to walk out on? the computer lab? riiiight... and the walk out just happens to be on 420. hermm.. i wonder what ppl will be doing instead of staying in class?
looking up the articles reminded me of a few weeks ago. there was a job faire and just like every job faire, there were military recruits. but the santa cruz hippies would have none of that. so they blocked the job faire entrance until the recruiters left. but i think that's bad. i mean, i'm sure there's someone who may have wanted to talk to the military. they recruiters should be there for that option. http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/06/local/stories/01local.htm
sometimes, this school makes me feel like an uber-conservative. then i go back to palo alto where i'm just a silly liberal. one time, i was eatting with a couple friends when a chick asked if she could share our table. we were fine with it b/c the rest of the place was full. then she started to talk about some sort of gathering to protest about fair wages, promotions, and such. about how they should promote internally. i'm perfectly fine with that except that sometimes the best person for the job can't be found internally. promotions should be based on merit, not seniority.
420 is a big day in santa cruz. so big that even rolling stone wrote a whole article about it. i can't find it but it was pretty funny. although the administration didn't think so. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/central_coast/9633345.html i haven't seen it but next to porter college there's a meadow. and last year and the year before, there were a bunch of ppl who got together and smoked out. i wish i could have taken a picture at 4:21. apparently there was a big mushroom cloud-ish thing of smoke. but there were also alot of police there to arrest anyone they wanted. bahh.. crazy santa cruz hippies.
crazy crazy hippies.
ok, so apparently the links don't work and i don't know html to fix it so here are the urls. the one for the sj mercury makes you sign up for access to the articles but it's free
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/15/local/stories/01local.htm/
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/19/local/stories/01local.htm/
http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~afrojas/TU/
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/06/local/stories/01local.htm
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/central_coast/9633345.htm
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
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2 comments:
This is exactly the type of craziness my sane friends try to combat. I mean, how can these people who block military recruiters call themselves "liberal". They're facists trying to impose their way on others. They don't deserve the term "liberal".
Maybe you guys read the paper or something and you now know why those activists wanted to kick the recruiters off campus, but I'll tell you just in case...They based their argument on the millitarys 'dont ask dont tell' policy and how it conflicts with a University of California policy against discrimination based on age, sex, orientation, race, creed, yada yada.... So I dont know if that changes your opinion about these 'hippies' or 'facists' as Jane calls them, but there was more behind kicking those recruiters off than anti milirtary sentiment. UC Berkeley did the same thing, except went about their protest in a classier way than the UCSC kids (big surprise). I found this site by doing a google search for "porter meadow ucsc 420" because I wanted to see some pics. I'm sorry you dont have any here, and that alll thats here is some heresay account. I missed out this year because I graduated and had to get a job. Dont be afraid, there is life after the meadow....but really, you should make the best of your time at UCSC. I was put off by some of the hippy bullshit I saw there too, especially considering the fact that UCSC kids have the wealthiest parents in the UC system, so it is total dress-down bullshit to the extreme, but they are nice kids and you cant fault someone for an identity crisis. But seriously...walk around that campus before you leave. especially this time of year. its so beautiful. go to the porter meadow....merrill meadow...go walk the fire roads and trails up to the twin gates...walk out of campus and cross empire grade and down into that canyon.....if you dont you somedayu may regret it! working in menlo park is sucking out my soul and this seeming disregard for the beauty of campus is what is motivating me to write such a long winded comment.
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