By Portia Bode
Published: October 25, 2009
Categorized in | Campus News, Multimedia, News, Video
By Greg Lehman, Jonathan Montgomery, and Portia Bode
Daily Titan Staff Writers
Students at Cal State Fullerton used the opportunity provided by the cancellation of classes, known as Furlough Week, to take over the lawn in front of the Titan Student Union and Becker Amphitheater from Tuesday Oct. 20 until Thursday Oct. 22. The space was utilized as an open forum for workshops and group discussions to exchange ideas and opinions. Over a dozen bands performed on the Becker Amphitheater stage as well.
Young people met up, did arts and crafts, listened to music and camped out in large numbers at CSUF for the three days of mandatory furlough days. Photo by Todd Barnes/Daily Titan Photo Editor
Furlough Fest was created by those who desired to join together in community environment to learn and teach each other in lieu of canceled classes.
Steven Rodriguez, a philosophy and anthropology major at CSUF, said that the Furlough Fest would not be the end in terms of student-organized events made to protest the budget cuts. Events will continue to be coordinated in the future, he said.
Political science major William David Bishop said he went to Furlough Fest because he wanted to join the protest along with other students who believe that the California government and CSUF administration, “are screwing up California and the CSU.”
“When the California state government created the budget, they prioritized the prison system funding over education system, so they clearly stated that they prioritize incarcerating young adults over educating them,” Bishop said.
Bishop said cuts being made at CSUF should be even across the board.
“(CSUF) Faculty can’t use this opportunity to turn Cal State Fullerton into a trade school like they did to Dominguez Hills. There’s a lot of evidence to show that that’s what’s going on here by cutting Liberal Arts disproportionately from Business or Science,” he said.
On Tuesday philosophy alumnus Ian Patrick McHugh’s held “Patrick’s Fantastic Poetry Party” by the David sculpture. Many gathered on the grass to hear and share poems.
A number of students joined Alumnus McHugh for his poetry party. Photo by Shruti Patel/Daily Titan Photo Editor
“Poems … are able to suggest within ourselves the very qualities of justice, goodness and rightness that we should care about,” McHugh said. “They have a kind of way of finding that emotional attachment that we have to these things and drawing them out.”
CSUF student Claire Davenport taught a workshop about how to make sex toys. Davenport said she was upset that classes got canceled, so she decided to have an open forum for students to talk about sexuality.
Davenport said she is repulsed by CSUF’s and community college’s sexuality courses. “I think teachers make it funny or humorous to make it easier for students, but it’s nothing to laugh about,” she said. “The use of uninvited humor is offensive to me.”
Art history major Barret Brower and philosophy major Christine Schaffrath taught Tai Chi to students next to the Clayes Performing Arts Center.
A small tent city sprang up in the Quad playing host to over a hundred people. Photo by Todd Barnes/Daily TItan Photo Editor
Some students chose to camp out on campus in tents. By Wednesday night approximately 20 tents were posted on the large lawn next to Becker Amphitheater.
CSUF philosophy alumnus Matt Harper organized the music line up for the festival. Hip hop, punk/surf rock, indie, electronic, and many more bands were in the line up, Harper said.
Students began a dance party around 8 p.m. Wednesday night as the band Trmrs started to play. A crowd of about 120 people danced in Becker Amphitheater as pornographic videos were projected onto a backdrop behind the band. Some participants drank alcoholic beverages from coffee tumblers.
Harper said that at first the police came and asked the crowd to turn down the volume of the music. When the police came back a second time they told the group the music had to be turned off completely.
“They were trying to take our generator and they said, ‘either you’re taking this off campus or we are,’” Harper said.
On Thursday Furlough Fest turned into a small communal atmosphere without bands. Near the tents people sat in a small circle, some talking, some drawing and others doing school work. Noise from conversations came out of some tents while others stood silent.
CSUF Vice President, Robert L. Palmer, and Associate Dean of Student Life, Esiquio Uballe, came to the camp site around 4 p.m. on Thursday. Palmer told Furlough Fest-ers to not use the generator anymore and consider the event finished at 10 p.m., Davenport said.
As Thursday night progressed students laid on blankets on the grass as candles shed light on them in Becker Amphitheater.
Sprinklers were turned on around 1 a.m. Students rushed frantically to save electronics from getting wet, paintings from being ruined and tents from getting soaked, Davenport said.
Everything was picked up by 3 a.m. with no trace that Furlough Fest had occurred.
Rodrigo Calderon paints during the day at Furlough Fest. Photo by Shruti Patel/Daily Titan Photo Editor
“The whole point of Furlough Fest was that we want the school to save money,” Rodrigo Calderon, graphic art major, said. “I personally feel that it would be hypocritical to have someone else be paid to pick up our mess.” Calderon was very proud of everyone for keeping the area clean and putting all of the trash in the trash can.
“I’m just so glad there was at least a few people who cared and (were) die-hard enough to come,” said Sean Jacobs, a philosophy major at UC Santa Cruz.
Meghan Tucker, an anthropology major at CSUF, said that though the Furlough Fest was a good event for students to hold, she still held her education as a higher priority. She said it was nice to know that the faculty at CSUF also held education as the primary goal of the campus by voting to keep more professors employed and take furlough days instead of firing more of the faculty. She said they were selfless in that “they chose the education system over their own personal jobs.”
Tucker said that the Fest was a great expression of the students’ dedication to education. “We’re here even though the teachers aren’t. I like the idea of self-empowering, that we have more to learn from each other than we think we do,” she said.
Recapping on three days of music and student-fun activities, Alfredo Asuzano, philosophy major, said the Furlough Fest’s primary attributes were that no demands were made to anyone and a space was transformed in to an open area for an exchange of ideas, music, and fun.
“This has been fantastic, considering that it was a week and a half prior to now that the ideas starting going around fliers were being passed out,” Asuzano said.
In the end, Asuzano said the only thing that would have made Furlough Fest better was more people.
Political science and philosophy major, Jason Woodrum said, “A number of us did decide to come together and do something about it. Not necessarily to celebrate ‘rough economic times’ but celebrate the fact that hey, they don’t want us to be here, (but) we’re going to come here regardless. Education is a priority to us. We figured if the administrators are not in a position where they can functionally educate us, we’re going to educate ourselves. We’re going to come to school to make bonds, share books, have live music and do as much as we possibly can.”
Print this post 
19 Responses to “Students occupy campus during Furlough Week”
Post a Comment
The Daily Titan wants your comments! Please know that we reserve the right to moderate these.
If you'd like to display your photo, go and get a Gravatar.
Stay connected
- Popular
- Featured
- Comments
- Tags
- Subscribe
- Students show solidarity for gay rights
- Second annual Relay for Life will come to Fullerton next month
- OCTA chairman discusses the state of the organization
- Titan trio dominant force on the mound
- Putting a face on CSUF artwork
- Review: Bat Boy:The Musical
- Club informs students of Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Krod: Wow. This iz person needs to realize that getting a job has nothing to...
- Liesl: *sigh*I'm sick of an entertaining hobby being turned into "LOL!Ner...
- Ivan: The MLS strike has been averted and the season starts on time next wee...
- BEARCAT not a wildcat: I have to agree with fingerbreaker because I want to see more from thi...
- CSUFSM: Grow up, silencedogood. You probably have no idea what it's actually l...
- silencedogood: California is too soft on crime. We need to lock up these doctors sell...
- Audrey H.: What about the Three-strike Law,regarding early prisoners release cre...
Aaron Thompson Afghanistan Angels ASI Barack Obama baseball Bryce Webster budget cuts California Cal State Fullerton CSU CSUF Dodgers drugs earthquake economy education Facebook fee increases Food Fullerton furloughs H1N1 health care Iraq Jer'Vaughn Johnson jobs Long Beach State March 4 Marijuana Music NBA NFL Obama Orange County parking review Sports Titan Student Union TSU Twitter UC UCLA USC volleyball
Subscribe to Daily Titan updates!
- Subscribe to the Daily Titan by Email
- Subscribe to the Daily Titan RSS Feed
Poll
Loading ...
Students get Text Links online. Need Debt Relief help for student loans? Buy a Memory Foam Mattress for your dorm room. Consider day trading to pay off college loans. Learn how web hosting is integral to setting up your college Web site. Check out the Cal State Fullerton Titan Yearbook Archive. Find a Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney near campus. Check out the Longboard Shop.
Firstly, I want to give Portia Bode credit for her dedication to this story.
Secondly, I’d like to say that yes, I am extremely proud of the fest’s efforts to clean up after itself, leaving a minimal litter-print. However, I’d like to clarify that the “WHOLE point” of furlough fest was not to save the school money.
I might have loosely said something along those lines, but trust me, the whole point of furlough fest is not something that I would ever try to describe. It was amazing in many ways: new friends were made, stories shared, lessons taught, art created, dishes sampled, music heard and danced to, and it was also the best tea-party I’ve ever been to.
“Some things worth learning…” Y’all know the rest.
Oh Johnathan I think this is just a fantastic article. Please keep up the grade A work.
i was at furlough fest all 3 days. although some things are lacking, this is certainly the best article written on furlough fest. not even the la times could come close to this quality of writing. well done.
portia bode you are a great writer and a good person. thank you very much for this great article and it was fantastic meeting you at furlough fest.
Finally! A well written article from people who weren’t just there in the wee hours of the morning. Thank you!
Can you guys post more pictures and possibly video from the event? Please! Maybe on facebook or include a link if you don’t want to crowd the page. Us non-holistic cornholin vegans would appreciate it greatly!
How long do we have to wait for the ASI to take credit for Furlough Fest?
You rule Portia
When’s the next one?!
So what was accomplished and what was the point you were all trying to make? Why didn’t you have informative classes and discussions instead of Burning Man CSUF?
Why would ASI want to take credit for furlough fest?…they looked much more productive than those who put on furlough fest.
furlough fest PUT THE CALL OUT TO ANYONE TO INVOLVE THEMSELVES HOWEVER THEY LIKED. so for those of you who think the workshops that did happen were uninformative, offensive, etc., BLAME YOURSELVES for not having been there to give the “informative workshop.” you were not there, you did not participate, and that’s your fault – furlough fest was NOT exclusive, it was entirely open and for that very reason anything could have happened SHOULD YOU have desired for it to happen.
you know what…I AGREE- ASI WAS FAR MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN “THOSE WHO PUT ON FURLOUGH FEST” …the “vent tent”…and in the past their FASHION SHOWS (we apologize for marching through that during “our rally”)! I love their surface level cultural “food tasting” events they have in the quad as well. I’m missing something….am I ??
what came out of it? well i know for sure that at the very, very least what resulted was an incredible bond between people who hadn’t known each other until furlough fest. i have never seen such strong friendships formed anywhere between so many people. people helped each other, shared with each other, experienced something beautiful together and REPLACED the misplaced trust they had in the university with trust in each other. and that is the very least – for the rest of what came out of it, well, i guess you sorta had to have been there…and oh, wait, you weren’t…it’s not like its a loss to anyone that those of you who would have preferred that furlough fest felt and looked like a corporate office weren’t there anyway.
furlough fest was an EXPERIMENT, an experiment that showed the possibility of living otherwise amongst other students even on a lawn within cal state fullerton. imagine waking up to so many new friends between the titan shops and performing arts building! i will never look at that space the same again. so for the naysayers, WHO CARES about your dime-a-dozen opinion, you’re the people who will chime in with your 2 cents on any article even though the only thing you “know” about what you’re talking about was in the article you just read. your understanding of furlough fest is less than topical, its the surface on top of a surface. your understanding is, and this is a paradox, a profound superficiality!
In Response to neverforgetfurloughfest:
You ask what losses were had as a result of the Furlough Fest? It was our dignity, as a student body. Who are you to call yourselves the student voice when in all reality, I have earned my education so that drug endorsing, ignorant, and blatantly ill-mannered people, like those representing the Fest, have proven themselves to be NEVER need to represent me. And yes, I am EARNING it, just like every single other person at CSUF, yet I have not been compelled to resent my campus once. No, I appreciate it. Despite all of the cuts and all of the limitations recently placed on it, after all of the raucous caused by your attempt at protesting, it has still provided an open line of communication, as many resources as possible, and a haven despite what Sacramento has taken.
And in terms of the bonding which you claim I have missed out on, I am not without. It did not take ignorant, misplaced information and mock care for me to find fellowship in those on the campus. I have gone three years, meeting the most amazing people, simply because I take pride in what Cal State Fullerton has given me, and I relate based solely on the fact that we are all Titans. Whether being a Titan has become more difficult or not, I know that there are roughly 34,999 other people on the campus who are dealing with the exact same situation that I am.
So all I ask is that all who have thrown their arms up in anger or been compelled to rebel against it’s own peers (i.e. ASI, Library employees, faculty, etc.) remember that we are ALL stuck and nothing will change until we can unite and speak with those who are actually to blame, not just those nearest us.
was anyone else overtaken by laughter while reading Reality’s comment? it was just funny!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahahaha
Actually, “Reality” has a good point….and a perspective that most students probably share. Well said.
i did not attend furlough fest although i did receive the flyer for it. i never got the imrpession that the people organizing furlough fest were trying to represent the student body considering their apparent disdain for representation, even when it comes to giving their own names. so i’m confused about Reality’s post since she seems to believe that the furlough fest was intended to represent all csuf students. there was never a claim made to being the “student voice” that i’m aware of and i’ve been keeping up with the relevant news on the issue. i believe the only people i’ve seen claim to be the student voice is ASI. also, i’d say a relationship founded upon being a “titan” is a pretty weak relationship…seems like most people at school could care less about each other despite their common status as “titans.” i’m also confused about Reality’s claim that the people who were involved with furlough fest endorsed drugs. where did they say that they endorsed drugs exactly?
Please refrain from using generalizations like “drug-endorsing”, “ignorant”, and “blatantly ill-mannered” while describing a group of people that you don’t know, contrasted with “the most amazing people” to describe those you do know.
It shows extreme bias and weakens your argument. Those are judgments that you’ve personally made. I’m a student, and a proud Titan, and I don’t appreciate you using generalizations and personal judgments while “speaking for me.” Please use words like “personally” or “in my opinion.”
In my opinion, no dignity was lost. Personally, I feel that you should not polarize students.
basically, what it comes down to is its a complex problem on many different levels, and there are no simple singular answer to solve it. pointing fingers is definitely not helping. i think asi is doing amazing things and so is furlough fest. how i see it, its just a different way of trying to solve the same problem. although most impotently we should do the right research so we know what is the problem is at its core.