Activist Daniel Osoy said the vote which would have taken place last December, but is now set for March 12, was delayed due in part, to hard work and planning by the OECC.
OECC participants said they stayed busy through winter session and will continue to rally into spring to prevent the cancellation of “one of the most successful sessions that we have,” Osoy said.
OECC held its first protests against the winter session cut in early December and has since gained support through networking on and off campus, Osoy said.
The protesters addressed clubs, distributed literature, and generated awareness using social networking sites, such as Facebook.
Robert DeWitz, another OECC organizer, said the group “met with numerous activists, and established a relationship with the National Lawyers Guild.”
“We’ve seen a lot of new faces,” he said. “We have a lot more active members than we did last semester.”
OECC’s general assemblies take place every Monday and Tuesday from 1 to 2 p.m. on the Schaeurman Library Lawn and various students are encouraged to act as the assembly facilitator each week. Instead of meeting in a room on campus, a possibility discussed last fall, students involved with OECC continue to meet on the lawn by choice.
“In the spirit of the Occupy movement, we want to be visible, we want to be transparent, we want to be all-inclusive,” DeWitz said.
DeWitz said that if OECC established a permanent meeting room, the movement would have to establish itself as a club that would mean more subjection to control by the administration.
“So we’ve decided to stick to free speech, because it gives us the opportunity to accomplish more,” he said.
A recent event OECC organized was Monday’s “Occupy the Club Rush,” where DeWitz said OECC protesters staged a “death-in” by dropping to the ground to symbolize the death of higher education.
Throughout Club Rush week, DeWitz said OECC will use the busy campus quad as an opportunity to continue to educate students to petition elimination of winter session by tabling and providing students with free silk-screening of shirts to feature various OECC designs.
Good Jobs LA, a nonprofit organization that aims to address major community concerns, said it is also working in conjunction with OECC because it feels the necessity to connect community members with students.
“Often times, only the [groups] that are politicized are the one’s taking action so we feel that there’s a connection that needs to be made with those two groups,” Jose Beltran, of Good Jobs LA, said.
However, Occupiers maintain that the OECC is a non-political movement because the issues they address are of concern for all students, regardless of which party they affiliate with.
“We’re trying to appeal to everybody as opposed to when you’re actually affiliated with some political party,” which Osoy said creates “tension between people’s ideologies and philosophies.”
Another project OECC has orchestrated is the Student
which is a series of workshops designed to educate students, teachers, faculty, and community members on important social and political issues.
The Student Collective College workshops will take place on select Wednesdays throughout spring, at 5 p.m. in Room 103 of the Art and Behavioral Sciences Building.
These free workshops are hosted by OECC and sponsored by MEChA, or the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, which is a student organization that Osoy is involved in and promotes higher education, culture, and history.
I’m trying to create knowledge,” Osoy, said. “I want to contribute something positive to my community and I definitely feel this is the way to do it.”
The next Student Collective College will take place on March 7 and students, faculty and community members are all encouraged to participate and may present at these workshops, Osoy said.
DeWitz said, students from 15 to 20 colleges across Southern California and people all across the country are anticipated to participate in today’s National Day of Student Action, staging walkouts, protests, and rallies to “publicize the crisis in education.”
“What they’ve decided to do is a synchronized, decentralized action so that each campus is responsible for organizing its own demonstration,” DeWitz said.
He said that students participating in the walk out will converge on the Library Lawn at 11:30 a.m.
“We are going to rally there until approximately 12 p.m. and then we are going to march around campus,” DeWitz said.
OECC said its main focus continues to be the education of students as to how their involvement in the decisions that concern them matters.
