Author: Annie Wolfstone
Occidental College is one of the nine most radical colleges in the country, according to a July 8 ranking in “The Huffington Post.” While the College has been home to several activist organizations, including the new Youth Coalition for Community Action (YCCA), some are skeptical about the accuracy of the ranking.
“The compiler of the July 8 list, Lindsay Dittman, is a high school student from Houston who attends a Connecticut boarding school,” Director of Communications Jim Tranquada said. Tranquada also made the case that Occidental’s reputation as “liberal” or “radical” is likely tied to Obama’s election rather than to any tangible evidence of the college’s activism.
“In 2009, immediately after his election, ‘Princeton Review’ suddenly ranked Occidental as number one for ‘most liberal students,'” he said.
Professor of Politics and Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program Peter Dreier, who has long been involved in politics and community organizing, shared some of Tranquada’s skepticism.
“I’d say that many Oxy students and faculty talk the talk, but far fewer walk the walk,” Dreier said. “Students get committed about social injustice but few have the organizing skills to figure out how to translate their passions into sustained action that gets results.”
However, some emerging activist groups on campus, including YCCA, have started to take action and engage in events that one might consider radical.
YCCA protested as part of Hunger Action Day L.A. on Sept. 22 at L.A.’s City Hall. UEP major Guido Girgenti (sophomore), who was voted Occidental’s 2011 Emerging Leader of the Year, along with the help of other local YCCA organizers, gathered a group of 50 students to attend last week’s march.
Of those 50 students, 40 were from Occidental’s YCCA chapter. Many of those students are also active in other clubs at Occidental including the Black Student Alliance and Student Labor Action Committee. The remaining 10 were from Growing Youth Growing Justice L.A. (GYGJ), a satellite group of YCCA for local high school students. In total, YCCA and GYGJ made up half of the protesters in attendance that Thursday.
“We saw the great disparity between the socioeconomic classes and how the impoverished people struggled to gain access to good food,” Eagle Rock High School (ERHS) student and GYGJ youth organizer Isaac O’Leary said of his organization’s founding.
The partnership between Occidental’s YCCA chapter and GYGJ began after Occidental students began working with an ERHS horticulture class. The organization then worked on a summer program with interested high school students, and GYGJ was formed.
“Over the summer, Guido had a project that empowered young people from Eagle Rock High School to build our own political views of social, economic, racial and food-related injustices in Los Angeles,” GYGJ student organizer Jasmine Quintana said.
Occidental’s chapter of YCCA was officially founded less than six months earlier, in February 2011. Students were spurred into action after participating in the winter 2010 New Orleans “Rebirth” project.
YCCA’s central goals include sustained commitment to correcting social injustices, community organizing and youth empowerment. Its mission is to encourage radical political analysis that engages youth in community organizing, education for liberation and a collective struggle toward justice.
Girgenti emphasizes that YCCA values collective political action over community service and notes the critical distinction. Echoing Professor Dreier’s sentiments, Girgenti stresses that YCCA wants to unite students as equals across social, racial economic and generational boundaries.
“If we want to be radical, we need to look at the root of the problem,” Girgenti said.
YCCA is one among several other groups at Occidental whose central aim is social justice. MECha/ALAS, BSA and SLAC—also in attendance at the march—have done work in the L.A. community to promote justice. Professor Drier points to SLAC’s recent achievement that brought non-sweatshop “Alta Gracia” clothing to the Occidental Bookstore.
While Dreier, Tranquada and a number of students, faculty and staff have doubts about Occidental’s ranking as ‘most radical,’ Girgenti, YCCA and GYGJ members remain optimistic.
“Hopefully, with this rising student movement that is multi-institutional, multi-racial and multi-issue, we can engage youth in struggles toward equity and move toward this goal of being a robust and radical campus,” Girgenti said.
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