Food for Thought in 5-Day Fast : Protest dramatizes opposition to UC’s move against affirmative action

Four college students have ended a five-day hunger strike at the UC Irvine campus. They failed to draw large numbers of participants to their side but succeeded in dramatizing opposition to the UC regents’ scrapping of affirmative action programs.

The four--three from UC Irvine and one from the Claremont Colleges--were arrested by campus police last weekend along with a protester who had ended his fast earlier. Campus authorities said they acted because the students refused to dismantle a tent encampment. Released from jail, the four moved to Sacramento to promote their cause and then ended their fast Wednesday.

To the credit of the university and the students involved, the protests were nonviolent, in keeping with the best traditions of civil disobedience. UCI officials monitored the hunger strikers’ health (at the end, they were so weak they had to be in wheelchairs), extended one deadline to dismantle the tent encampment and ensured that police officers did not manhandle those arrested.

In addition to increasing public awareness of the pressure against affirmative action programs, the hunger strikers garnered some support from other students, generating a rally at Cal State Fullerton and a brief occupation of a UC Irvine academic office.

The regents were wrong last July when they voted to end policies that take race and gender into account in admissions, hiring and contracting decisions. There is no evidence of widespread reverse discrimination or enrollment of unqualified minority students in California’s public universities.

It’s doubtful that public opposition to affirmative action runs deep. On the day the students ended their hunger strike, a leader of a movement to put an anti-affirmative-action proposal on next year’s statewide ballot said the campaign was having trouble raising money. That should not cause concern even to like-minded Californians, because the initiative is unnecessary: Court rulings already limit the reach of the state’s few formal affirmative action programs.