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The 2005-2006 school year was a huge year for campus activism at UM. With major ballot initiatives being voted on in November 2006, a lot was being done to educate the campus. The thing that everyone remembers about that year was efforts around proposal 209 awareness, which was a ballot initiative aimed at erasing affirmative action in the state of Michigan. But there were many other initiatives in which a large number of students took part in. One was the raise the minimum wage campaign where a coalition of student groups was formed who successfully lobbied to raise Michigan's minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Another initiative students fought against was HR4437 which was a bill aimed at criminalizing illegal immigrants and fining and jailing those who aided them in any way. A final large student coalition which spun off of this was a restaurant workers rights campaign. Ann Arbor like many towns in the United States targets illegal immigrants to work in restaurant where they proceed to treat them deplorably. Firing workers for asking for a sick day, or even asking to go to the bathroom were commonplace. Not too mention they did not even receive the already low Michigan minimum wage. The 2005-2006 was a year in which thousands of students at UM got involved with social justice issues that directly affected Latinos.

At the University of Michigan campus activism has been nationally recognized since the 1960’s. Ann Arbor was a town that mirrored the counter-cultural revolutions that were taking place in Greenwich Village and in Berkeley given that the student body was very attune to the national movement. The topic of contention for this generation was largely the Vietnam War. Young people of color were disproportionally dying abroad in Vietnam fighting a war for a country, which oppressed them. Black and Latino youth were unfairly targeted to be the soldiers of an expensive and unpopular war in Southeast Asia. Many young Anglo-Americans having the privilege of attending colleges like the University of Michigan were excluded from the selective draft. However just because they were not fighting did not mean that they wanted the war to continue. On the contrary, it was the anti-war movements that largely began in universities that helped shape popular opinion and dislike of the Vietnam War at home.
           

One of the most important anti-war groups on the national scale was the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. SDS immerged out of the ideology the New Left. This “New Left” was not referring to the previous socialist left, but the New Left wing of American political though that was popular amongst college students. The new left stressed personal issues, and challenged the meaning of the status quo. It was in all ways the opposite of conformist 1950’s views. Unlike the WWII era, young people did not blindly accept the idea that America was always unquestionably right in its wars abroad. Youth saw their peers return from war with injuries or folded flags (which were given to the diseased). Yet when they returned they were not heroes, they were meant with indifference and sometimes scorn. SDS formed in Ann Arbor from the New Left and became a huge network which connected colleges in their of the war.
           

Another important event in the University of Michigan’s history of activism occurred very recently.  In 2003, the University of Michigan challenged the highest court in the United States when it went up against the Supreme Court to retain its admission policies, which considered race as a factor for college admission. In two cases: Gratz vs. Bollinger and Gutter vs. Bollinger, White plaintiffs were suing the institution on the basis that under qualified African American students were taking their place. The plaintiffs argued that the application policies at the University of Michigan were in direct offense to the 14th amendment that prohibited race from being a discouraging factor. They believed they did not receive equal advantage because they were white.
           

The court ruled in Gratz’s case, that the University’s undergraduate application process relied too heavily on race and therefore was unconstitutional. The university system had to dislodge its quota system that gave underrepresented minorities preferential treatment in getting admitted. But they advantage minorities received was no greater than that given to an athlete, a legacy, someone from lower socio-economic status, or someone from a small town. Nonetheless, Michigan was ordered to create an entirely new system. But when it came to University’s Law school, the Supreme Court decided that diversity should be a factor. They recognized the importance of affirmative action citing that “Major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.” What is unclear however is why diversity in the increasingly global marketplace did not matter for undergraduate admissions. A few short years later, Affirmative action was completely stuck down in the entire state of Michigan as the result of a ballot initiative, proposition 209.
           

Despite the fact that voters in the state of Michigan voted to end affirmative action with prop 2, the student body was extremely activism in trying to defeat it. The months leading up to the November decision were amongst some of the most activism in my tenure at the University. Interestingly, many of the issues at the forefront of students’ agendas directly affected the Latino community. Particularly, huge educational efforts were conducted to inform the campus and other colleges around the state regarding the affects proposal 209 would have. The bottom line was that prop 209 was an initiative aimed at erasing affirmative action in the state of Michigan with added results dealing with massive funding and programming cuts for minorities and women.

Aside from prop 209, students organized for many other issues as well. One issue was raising the minimum wage where a coalition of student groups was formed who successfully lobbied to raise Michigan's minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Many of the workers in Ann Arbor who receive the minimum wage are Latino workers. While this form of economic discrimination is perhaps not directly targeted towards Latinos, it affects them disproportionally. So many Latinos are in desperate situations and do not have the support of a union, and they forced to do anything they can to survive. After the success of the “raise the wage coalition,” another cause gained a lot of student attention and support: restaurant workers’ rights. Ann Arbor like many towns in the United States targets illegal immigrants to work in restaurants where they proceed to treat them deplorably. Firing workers for asking for a sick day, or even not permitting them to go to the bathroom were commonplace. Not too mention illegals usually do not even receive the already low Michigan minimum wage.

One last initiatives that many students rallied in opposition to was HR4437, which was a bill aimed at criminalizing illegal immigrants along with fining and jailing those who aided them in any way. While this bill was not directly targeted towards Latinos, Latinos compose a large percentage of the illegal immigrant population of the United States, and thereby become disproportionally targeted. But many individuals and organizations also exist to help illegal immigrants break into the United States. Specifically, churches and community centers work on feeding and housing this needy population. Under HR4437 anyone who continues these practices are subject to retribution. Thanks to the ongoing work of UM students on social justice issues awareness is promoted in Ann Arbor and the fight for the Latino community continues.

 

 
 
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Created by: Xavier Segura, Monica Madrid, Santos Perez, Eric Soto 2006