Protests, Prada, and Picnics (oh my)

I was going to wait to write this until I had stolen pictures from Teresa documenting the events. These will just have to wait until my next post. Get excited.

College and university campuses have often been the sites for student activism and protest. While this is clearly still the case today, it seems like a lot of US schools have left their intense activism behind in the seventies. I minimally got involved in some protests that happened at Vassar last spring. They were protesting the massive lay-offs of workers on campus along with the fact that our president refused to take a pay-cut (not following the example of many other university presidents). The rally/protest thing, however, was mainly focused on and included the workers rather than the students. Students obviously participated, but to a kind of limited extent. I must say though, I've had a very different experience here at Wits.

University prices have been continuously going up for students, making it more and more difficult for people to come to school. Apparently they have demonstrations and protests about it pretty regularly the past couple of years. So this year students continued the tradition of demonstrations. There was quite a lot of media surrounding the event, especially when students started disrupting classes, tearing up exams etc. Every night it sounded like some sort of sporting event was going on outside, which confused me for a bit because I felt like I was missing some celebration or something (there was a lot of shouting and horn blowing etc) until I figured out what the dealeo was.

For myself I've been trying to figure out if this sort of action from students on campus is the best response to the price increase. One of the members of the protesting student groups came in to speak to our internship about it today. She talked about how it was not a sudden event, that it had been building for quite some time and it was not the only action the students had pursued. Also, she emphasized that they wanted to disrupt campus life enough so that the administration had to respond. Another student, however, brought up the fact that students pay quite a bit per lecture and the fact that other students come in to disrupt these lectures is quite disrespectful. None of my classes were disrupted, so I don't have a personal account to tell, but at the time hearing about exam papers being ripped up so that students could not take tests felt a bit extreme. It's one thing to disrupt the school by acting against fellow students (in a way) and another to disrupt those in administrative positions, like possibly camping out in their offices until talks could be arranged or something. In the end they got the administration to agree to knock down the percent increase, but not by a lot.

The other issue raised was the idea that the protests were not as well organized as they could be, and that only a section of the student population fully knew what was going on. For example, all of us international students didn't hear about the protests until they were well underway. As well, there was a point brought up that the protesters were mainly the black students rather than the white, Indian, or colored students (those are real racial categories here, still leftover from apartheid times). I guess that's just the nature of the student groups on campus. I talked to some Americans this afternoon about this and Sasha brought up the point that our generation may be less about 'the protest' but it may be because we speak out in different ways. Are we still successfully getting our voices heard though?

Ok, well anyways that was going on throughout the week, but other things happened as well. Ayesha apparently has crazy connections and procured a couple of free tickets to a fashion show that she made available to people interested in IHRE. So, on Wednesday night Teresa, Sasha and I went to a really cool South African fashion show. I wore a dress I bought on like the second week here at this flea market thing that happens every Sunday at the mall. It's really pretty. Anyways, a couple asked me around the door who I was wearing. Haha I've never been asked about the designer of an outfit of mine before, obviously. I don't wear clothes that would normally merit such a question. Anyways, I flusteredly replied, 'uh, you know some person. I actually got this at a market so I'm not positive.' Next time I'm telling the hypothetical couple that I handmade it myself. Oh yeah. It was cool to be asked though, as if the dress was something fancy. Anywho, before the show we walked around the place and it had a lot of fashion vendors and a bar and this display of fashion students re-imagining of 'the little black dress' out of "waste products, recycled materials or found objects." It felt so project runway (the link is for you mom and dad, so you can keep up with my pop culture references). It was actually really cool and I felt stupid to not bring any extra money. I didn't realize there would be some high-end vendors there. I almost bought a really cool t-shirt, but the credit card machine would not take any international cards because apparently they've had problems with that in the past. Too bad.

The show itself was pretty cool. It was only about twenty minutes and the most interesting part of it was that every model was wearing some sort of hat or headpiece that covered at least her eyes if not her entire face with its veil thing. The hats kind of looked like this except you could see less of her face. Seriously. Oh, I guess they were a bit more stylish. Often they would be dyed an intense color, like deep blue, that in turn matched the outfit. It was interesting because it made you focus more on the clothes. Well, in theory I feel like that would be why the designers would choose to do it. Though honestly I was pretty distracted by the hats. And all the models wore bright red lipstick, so for the most part the only thing you could see under the hat (or below the head piece thing that had tassels that covered her eyes, which some models wore) were these huge bright lips. Very odd choice. But whatever, I'm not in fashion. I actually had more fun watching the line of very serious people right next to the runway. I assumed these people were important fashion figures, because they wore expressions of casual, disconnected interest and seemed like they could pass judgment that could make or break these designers' careers. So that was kind of cool.

So that was Wednesday. I had a nice night Friday where I went out with some other international students and some South African guys and we went out to get food and then I showed all of them Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was totally a hit, but how could it not be? That movie totally rocks. The next day was this little event known as All-Res Picnic. For my fellow Vassar students, I'd equate it with founder's day. Sort of. Except at Wits you all get on a bus at like 9 in the morning, they drive you an hour and a half away from campus to this park place on the water, give you packs of raw meat (which you then brai with friends) and alcohol (yes, the campus supplies you with alcohol. you technically paid for it in the fee for the picnic.. but still. weird right?) and they supply a dj and then they start the buses back up at 7 at night. What I like about founder's day over this is that it is on campus so if you want to take a nap from all the festivities (something I feel like people I know do every year, go us!) or get off campus and go out to eat at., you know, a diner or something, it is an option. But the picnic was fun, very chill. I actually was fairly low energy all day which was weird. I didn't start getting energy until basically when we were getting back on the bus. And then I belted out songs with a girl named Lethabo (who hails from Germany) all the way back. We made lots of friends. I then made cookies in a mini convection oven with Sarah and watched episodes of television shows. It was fun to bake, well bake is a loose term I guess, though we had the setting on grill for the longest time and it was really confusing why our cookies were not baking. And then we figured it out and they cooked pretty quick.

So that was my week. This Thursday is a national holiday and so a bunch of us are taking off to go to Durban. I've been told to equate Durban to Florida in terms of weather. We have some friends who live there and agreed to take a five-hr road trip with us and let us crash on their floor. I'm really excited about it. And the night before I'm helping a friend here celebrate her 20th. Maybe I'll also get work done this week... it could possibly be in the cards.