Since 1960 Volume 85, Issue 26
Monday October 26, 2009
The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
Furlough Fest takes over CSUF campus By Portia Bode, Greg Lehman and Jonathan Montgomery Daily Titan Staff Writers news@dailytitan.com
Students at Cal State Fullerton used the opportunity provided by the cancellation of classes, known as Furlough Week, to take over the lawn in front of the Titan Student Union and Becker Amphitheatre from Tuesday Oct. 20 until Thursday Oct. 22. The space was utilized as an open forum for workshops and group discussions to exchange ideas and opinions. Over a dozen bands performed on the Becker Amphitheatre stage as well. Furlough Fest was created by those who desired to join together in community environment to learn and teach each other in lieu of canceled classes. Steven Rodriguez, a philosophy and anthropology major at CSUF, said that Furlough Fest would not be the end in terms of student-organized events made to protest the budget cuts. Events will continue to be coordinated in the future, he said. Political science major William David Bishop said he went to Furlough Fest because he wanted to join the protest along with other students who believe that the California government and CSUF administration “are screwing up California and the CSU.” “When the California state government created the budget, they prioritized the prison system funding over education system, so they clearly stated that they prioritize incarcerating young adults over educating them,” Bishop said. Bishop added that cuts being made at CSUF should be even across the board. “(CSUF) Faculty can’t use this opportunity to turn Cal State Fullerton into a trade school like they did to Dominguez Hills. There’s a lot of evidence to show that that’s what’s going on here by cutting liberal arts disproportionately from business or science,” he said. On Tuesday, philosophy alumnus Ian Patrick McHugh’s held “Patrick’s Fantastic Poetry Party” by the David sculpture. Many gathered on the grass to hear and share poems. “Poems … are able to suggest within ourselves the very qualities of justice, goodness and rightness that we should care about,” McHugh said. “They have a kind of way of finding that emotional attachment that we have to these things and drawing them out.” CSUF student Claire Davenport taught a workshop about how to make sex toys. Davenport said she was upset that classes got canceled, so she decided to have an open forum for students to talk about sexuality. Davenport said she is repulsed by CSUF’s and community college’s sexuality courses. “I think teachers make it funny or humorous to make it easier for students, but it’s nothing to laugh about,” she said. “The use of uninvited humor is offensive to me.” Art history major Barret Brower and philosophy major Christine Schaffrath taught Tai Chi to students next to the Clayes Performing Arts Center. Some students chose to camp out on campus in tents. By Wednesday night, approximately 20 tents were posted on the large lawn next to Becker Amphitheatre. CSUF philosophy alumnus Matt Harper organized the music line up for the festival. Hip hop, punk/surf rock, indie, electronic, and many more bands were in the line up, Harper said. Students began a dance party around 8 p.m. Wednesday night as the band Trmrs started to play. A crowd of about 120 people danced in Becker Amphitheatre as pornographic videos were projected onto a backdrop behind the band. Some participants drank alcoholic beverages from coffee tumblers.
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Harper said that at first the police came and asked the crowd to turn down the volume of the music. When the police came back a second time they told the group the music had to be turned off completely. “They were trying to take our generator, and they said, ‘either you’re taking this off campus or we are,’” Harper said. On Thursday, Furlough Fest turned into a small communal atmosphere without bands. Near the tents, people sat in a small circle, some talking, some drawing and others doing school work. Noise from conversations came out of some tents while others stood silent. CSUF Vice President, Robert L. Palmer, and Associate Dean of Student Life, Esiquio Uballe, came to the campsite around 4 p.m. on Thursday. Palmer told Furlough Fest-ers to not use the generator anymore and finish the event at 10 p.m., Davenport said. As Thursday night progressed students laid on blankets on the grass as candles shed light on them in Becker Amphitheatre. Sprinklers were turned on around 1 a.m. Students rushed frantically to save electronics from getting wet, paintings from being ruined and tents from getting soaked, Davenport said. Everything was picked up by 3 a.m. with no trace that Furlough Fest had occurred. “The whole point of Furlough Fest was that we want the school to save money,” said Rodrigo Calderon, an art major. “I personally feel that it would be hypocritical to have someone else be paid to pick up our mess.” Calderon was very proud of everyone for keeping the area clean and putting all of the trash in the trash can. “I’m just so glad there was at least a few people who cared and (were) diehard enough to come,” said Sean Jacobs, a philosophy major at UC Santa Cruz. Meghan Tucker, an anthropology major at CSUF, said that though Furlough Fest was a good event for students to hold, she still held her education as a higher priority. She said it was nice to know that the faculty at CSUF also held education as the primary goal of the campus by voting to keep more professors employed and take furlough days instead of firing more of the faculty. She said they were selfless in that “They chose the education system over their own personal jobs.” Tucker said that the Fest was a great expression of the students’ dedication to education. “We’re here even though the teachers aren’t. I like the idea of self-empowering, that we have more to learn from each other than we think we do,” she said. Recapping on three days of music and student-fun activities, Alfredo Asuzano, a philosophy major, said Furlough Fest’s primary attributes were that no demands were made to anyone and a space was transformed into an open area for an exchange of ideas, music and fun. “This has been fantastic, considering that it was a week and a half prior to now that the ideas starting going around flyers were being passed out,” Asuzano said. In the end, Asuzano said the only thing that would have made Furlough Fest better was more people. Political science and philosophy major, Jason Woodrum said, “A number of us did decide to come together and do something about it. Not necessarily to celebrate ‘rough economic times’ but celebrate the fact that hey, they don’t want us to be here, (but) we’re going to come here regardless. Education is a priority to us. We figured if the administrators are not in a position where they can functionally educate us, we’re going to educate ourselves. We’re going to come to school to make bonds, share books, have live music and do as much as we possibly can.”
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Photos 1, 2 and 5 By Shruti Patel | Photos 3, 4, 6 and 7 by todd barnes/Daily Titan Photo Editors 1: Students gathered on the grass near the David sculpture Tuesday to hear and share poetry for “Patrick’s Fantastic Poetry Party.” 2: Students, who refused to identify themselves, recreationally smoked hookah. 3: A small tent city sprang up in the quad, which played host to over a hundred people Wednesday night. 4: Students and their friends met up, did arts and crafts, and listened to music during the three days of mandatory furlough last week. 5: Rodrigo Calderon, senior art student, painted and gave a tutorial on caricatures on the first day of Furlough Fest. 6: A crowd of about 120 students danced in the Becker Amphitheatre Wednesday night. 7: Police came and asked the crowd to turn down the volume of the music due to complaints by residents.
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