http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/15/BA6A1BUGLU.DTL
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
It's been a seriously dramatic year at the University of California,
where hundreds of students seized buildings, demonstrated and shut
down regents meetings last fall to protest rising tuition and the
perceived privatization of the public school.
It's also been a satirically dramatic year, thanks to the UC Movement
for Efficient Privatization, a fledgling group of mostly grad
students in business attire that uses humor tinged with sarcasm to
lampoon UC officials.
Their own name is an example. Many UC students believe leaps in
tuition and reduced state funding are turning the public university
into a private institution.
The UC Movement for Efficient Privatization says, "Why not?"
"Unlike others whining about the direction of privatization, we're
concerned about the snail's pace at which the inevitable
transformation is proceeding," said Shane Boyle, 27, unofficial
chairman of UCMeP.
That's You See Me ... you get the idea.
In the spirit of theatrical political activists, from Billionaires
for Bush to the Yippies, the 5-month-old group says its goal is to
help UC leaders advance their goals.
"We take them to the logical extreme to show how ridiculous they can
be," said UCMeP's Chief Artistic Officer Brandon Woolf, 26, a
doctoral student in theater with Boyle. "It's another tactic for protest."
To wit:
On Thursday, UCMeP organized a dozen or so people into a Student
Counter-Activist Brigade, or SCAB, to film an instructional video on
better ways to cross a picket line than using police batons, widely
perceived to have backfired last fall. Using a Trojan horse, for
example. Or having Moses part the sea of demonstrators.
The group expects such skills will come in handy on March 4 when
students and faculty across California plan large demonstrations for
public education.
Encouraging everyone to cross the picket lines will "support UCMeP's
plans to dismantle public education," said Boyle, whose doctoral
thesis, "Playing With Authority," examines performance activism in
1960s Germany.
UCMeP has made itself known on the Berkeley campus since September.
That's when UC President Mark Yudof, who earns about $600,000, drew
students' ire for telling the New York Times he'd take a $200,000 pay
cut for salary parity with President Obama - if Air Force One were
part of the package.
Seeing this as a philanthropic opportunity, UCMeP issued fundraising
flyers: "Help Buy Mark Yudof a Plane!"
Adopt-a-Regent campaign
The group showed similar magnanimity toward the UC regents after
students criticized the board for raising tuition
32 percent. Its Adopt-a-Regent campaign supported "California's 26
most underappreciated and undervalued public employees."
But UCMeP's shining moment came on Jan. 29 when it honored Dan
Mogulof, spokesman for UC Berkeley administrators.
"You have spoken courageously and eloquently on their behalf, waxing
poetically on the value of autocracy during times of emergency,"
Boyle said at the standing-room-only gala where he declared Mogulof
the Top Outstanding Oratorical Leader (TOOL) of the Year. "You truly
embody everything a TOOL stands for."
Mogulof showed up to graciously decline the award.
To be sure, he appeared on condition that the event be
invitation-only. Among the select crowd were Dean of Students
Jonathan Poullard, campus Police Chief Mitchell Celaya, and students
who'd been arrested for seizing buildings.
"I am unworthy of this awesome honor," Mogulof said through a spokeswoman.
Asked later why he agreed to join in a ceremony meant to mock him,
Mogulof said: "We have to be open to opportunities for interaction -
both conventional and unconventional."
His reaction shows how performance activism can be a catalyst for
bringing together warring students, faculty and administrators, said
theater Professor Catherine Cole, who had donned a wig and
transformed into Mogulof's spokeswoman at the gala - Gloria O'Toole.
'They make both sides laugh'
"The danger in a protest situation is that it breaks down to just two
sides that stop listening to each other," Cole said. "UCMeP can shift
the tenor of the discourse. They make both sides laugh."
The participants did, in fact, end the gala with "Kumbaya."
UC Davis Professor Larry Bogad, author of "Electoral Guerilla
Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements," called UCMeP's
stunts "a form of serious play."
"Things are dire in this state," Bogad said. "They're using the tools
of satire to make their point. And they're doing it pretty effectively."
To learn more: Visit the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization at
www.ucmep.wordpress.com.
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E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.
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