Instead of securing last-minute graduation tickets and dealing with frantic relatives before graduation like most U. California-Berkeley seniors, Horacio Corona and Alejandro Lara-Briseno are enduring the hunger pangs of going without food for more than 168 hours.
For one week, about 18 hunger strikers from the “Hungry for Justice Coalition” have been camped out in front of California Hall, awaiting the return of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau from Europe.
The strikers are demanding Birgeneau publicly denounce a recent Arizona immigration law, make UC Berkeley a sanctuary campus and provide extended protections for undocumented students, drop all student conduct charges against activists, stop cuts to low-wage employees, suspend conduct procedures and initiate a democratic, student-led process to review the code, as well as commit to using nonviolent means to ensure safety at demonstrations.
Concern for the strikers’ health has caused campus administrators to announce new initiatives as incentives to end the strike, but demonstrators say they are determined to continue despite impacts to their health.
“It’s hard to focus because of a lot of sleep deprivation since we are sleeping outside,” Corona said.
Though the campus administration has produced three responses to the demands and has met with members of the coalition, the strikers said they will remain outside until they meet with Birgeneau.
In a statement released Friday, Birgeneau acquiesced to one of the strikers’ demands by publicly calling for the repeal of the Arizona law.
Another statement released Friday by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Harry Le Grande said the campus would create a task force “to identify and articulate the issues and needs of undocumented students at Cal,” ensure student representation in the review of the code of student conduct, take steps towards creating an “inclusive” campus climate and treat staff as “compassionately as possible.”
The campus administration has also said they will form a task force that will include students, faculty and staff, to review and possibly revise the code of student conduct. Charges against students involved in the Dec. 11 “Open University” were recently dropped.
Strikers said they remain unmoved and “disillusioned” with campus responses and continue to stand by their prior demands. Lara-Briseno said he already knew about the initiatives announced by Breslauer and Le Grande before the letter was released and is “unimpressed.”
“We are still set on demands in terms of student conduct for them to drop the charges against the protesters,” Corona said. “We believe they charged these students under undue process. A lot of these students are our personal friends that are committed and invested leaders in Chicano groups.”
Staff from the Tang Center continue to check on the strikers daily, making sure they are sufficiently hydrated by drinking cranberry juice and are retaining fluids, said Kim LaPean, communications manager for University Health Services.
Nancy Amy, associate professor of nutritional science and toxicology at UC Berkeley, said it would take a month before strikers would feel the physical effects of not eating, but they will feel other “psychological changes” much sooner. She added that administrators should be worried about the strikers’ lack of sleep rather than their lack of food.
“There have been people who have participated in hunger strikes for months,” she said. “If people continue not sleeping after two days, they start experiencing serious consequences such as hallucinations.”
Lara-Briseno said he is willing to continue going without food until he graduates.
“Us staying on the hunger strike is our way to pressure them and ensure that they won’t provide us with false words,” he said.