Comment by fgimenez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fgimenez | Hacker News Reader

This was a ridiculous protest. Doe and Moffit (the two main campus libraries) were shut down, students created do not cross lines, and a bunch of idiots pulled the fire alarm in all the big buildings. Berkeley students with technical majors who were too busy working to protest had to evacuate buildings because protesters kept pulling fire alarms.

If you walked through Barrows or Dwinelle (humanities buildings) they were empty. Conversely, if you took a stroll through Soda or Cory (CS and EE respectively) they were packed with students finishing final projects.

I once had a professor who stated that no matter what, Californians will always vote for less taxes and more services, which is exactly what is going on now. I don't understand how they can chant "End Budget Cuts, Don't Raise our Fees!" in the same sentence without the cognitive dissonance making itself blindingly obvious.

I took a stroll to see the actual protest today. It was a bunch of kids who wanted to feel like they were part of something; a large group of people who wanted to scream and cheer as if this was a football game. Students were trying to shout over each other to lead cheers to get their own little slice of revolution. In the end, they presented no solutions besides "Cut Executive Pay" and have contributed nothing to either cause they were fighting for.

Hi. To try to calmly explain a bit, "End Budget Cuts, Don't Raise Our Fees!" is not the self-contradictory statement you make it out to be. On the one hand, although state revenues are down, state spending priorities are all messed up (e.g., we spend way too much jailing people for non-violent drug offenses for stuff like pot, constantly increasing state spending on the prison system - while cutting support for education). On the other hand, the UC system's spending priorities are also screwed up with may more than is rationale going to capital investment. It is true that the Regents lack authority to correct these problems and, to the extent the protest moves only the Regents, it is indeed a waste of time. However, if the protests are regarded more as simply putting a foot down against the log-jam of a larger political situation - it's quite sane.

Also, "presenting solutions" is really not the protesters' obligation in a situation like this. Forcing a crisis that elevates as far as possible and draws attention are reasonable ends in and of themselves. These kinds of action are how, historically, political debates shift focus. Solutions are not hard to come by. There is no shortage of them. The state needs escape from prop 13, from ballot initiative spending mandates, from its high incarceration rate, and so forth. Implementing those solutions requires action by voters, the legislature, the regents, and so forth.

You have to start somewhere and that's what your peers did today.

Incidentally, the violence score appears to be roughly: Protesters - shoving some crowd control barriers; Cops - clubbing with batons, indiscriminate use of pepper spray, and allegedly at least one rubber bullet fired.

Look, I understand that any good movement needs eyes, but it's infuriating when you hear people state "nobody knows what we're doing, we're just running around and chanting." It's just plain irresponsible when people who have nothing to do with this protest, and moreover people who condemn the protest, are forced to suffer from the opinions of a very vocal group. The situation is akin to that Mitch Hedberg joke "I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it." A large portion of students really do not believe in this cause. And an even larger portion, myself included, is willing to sympathize only a valid argument is given; an argument that has yet to surface.

Does California need reform? A resounding YES! But nobody here at Berkeley seemed to care until their tuitions were raised. Prop 13 is 31 years old (no palindrome intended) but it's only now that people think it was a bad idea. Hell, 6 years ago Arnold almost had his campaign derailed because Warren Buffet dared to question California's sacred initiative. Of course prop 13 is awful, the prison system is crowded, and California's finances are a mess, yet none of my peers deemed it prudent to protest in Sacramento.

Clearly the solution is to get a time machine and do things your way. But we don't have those yet, so this is the result.

You left out that not only are the prisons crowded but, more importantly, the incarceration rate (as a percentage of population) is absurdly high by global standards.

This was a ridiculous protest.

I disagree. I wouldn't have heard about it if the students hadn't acted ridiculously. Since they did, their message has been spread far and wide and has gained national media attention.

That's effective advertising.

The real problem is how society reacts to things like this, not that the students hacked that hard-coded reaction for their own movement's gain.

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