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143 7 Contest, Resistance, and Decision On the morning of Thursday, July 20, the Regents’ headquarters complex in San Francisco resembled an occupied territory. Police officers were posted on each of the four blocks surrounding the university complex, some in riot gear, others arrayed as part of an elite SWAT team. Hovering around the barricades, stringing cables and testing microphones was a small army of television and radio journalists covering the scene. Shortly after dawn a line of students, ministers, members of the Rainbow Coalition, and other interested members of the public gathered at the door of the auditorium in which the meeting would be held. The weather was gray, with wind and fog chilling the scene. Many in the early morning crowd had attended a rally the evening before at a San Francisco church, with over 1,000 people on hand to hear Reverend Jackson (Chavez, 1998). Many planned to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience if the Regents voted to end existing UC policies on affirmative action. Organizers moved up and down the line with bullhorns, exhorting the crowd, explaining details of a rally scheduled for later that morning, where Reverend Jackson and Mario Savio, a leader of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the sixties, would speak. The first problem the protesters faced was how to get into the building. The auditorium held fewer than 300 people. Many seats were reserved for the press, invited guests, and individuals connected with the university and campus administrations. Nearly 200 requests had been received from members of the public hoping to address the board, and thirty guests had been invited to speak to the board. It was clear that most of those in line to enter would not be seated in the auditorium with the Regents. The Regents had arranged for a video broadcast in a room adjacent to the auditorium for the more than 500 spectators unable to obtain access to the main auditorium. Six protestors were arrested before the meeting began. YOUNG REPUBLICANS As the meeting was to be broadcast live over local radio and television, even the content of the crowd in the auditorium was contested by political actors. 144 Burning Down the House The president of UC Berkeley’s chapter of the College Republicans, Scott Kamena, described his role this way: My original assignment was to bring as many students as possible to picket against affirmative action outside. I was one of many organizers in this effort. We were supposed to concentrate on getting people there, while the Wilson campaign was to provide the picket signs. However, it soon became clear to Republican strategists that the picketing wasn’t going to work. We just weren’t getting the volunteers. Conservatives tend to have a real distaste for protests. They also tend to have jobs, which makes it difficult to dedicate an entire Thursday to a demonstration.1 Someone sympathetic to their cause seemed to have found the solution for the small numbers problem faced by the College Republicans: pack them into the few available seats inside the auditorium. Kamena explained it this way: While I can’t prove it, I believe that somebody went to great lengths to make sure that we would get in. The auditorium was originally scheduled to open at 7:30 a.m., a half-hour before the meeting was scheduled to begin. On Monday night I was told (I won’t say by whom) that the doors would actually open at 6:30 a.m. and that my group had better be there before then. I was concerned that we would be beaten to the punch by the liberal activists that had vowed to camp outside the doors the night before. But I was told that as long as we were there by 6:20 a.m. we would get in.2 Although the College Republicans did get into the meeting, most of the other students did not. The students were further frustrated by the rules for addressing the board. At prior board meetings, students had been asked to hold their comments for the July meeting. Yet at the commencement of the July meeting, it became clear there was no way to accommodate all of the members of the public who had signed up to speak, as well as the various politicians, activists, and interest group representatives who had been invited to address the board. Given their time constraints, the Regents opted to hold...

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