By Greg Lehman
Daily Titan Staff Writer

Students will be holding Furlough Fest at Cal State Fullerton from Oct. 20 through 22. The Fest will be a series of workshops and open-forum discussions on many different topics given by students and professors alike over the three-day period when CSUF will be closed.

Alfredo Asuzano, philosophy major, said, “because all it takes for state education to cease is an economist’s demand for thrift, we feel it is necessary to take education into our own hands.” Asuzano said he wishes that the events will be constructive. “Hopefully the workshops raise connections between students so that we replace the misplaced trust we had in the university with reliance on each other.”

The Furlough Fest will be conducted by announcing which workshops will be given each day in a manner opposed to systematic organization, having a tentative schedule placed at Becker Ampitheater for students to write themselves in, Asuzano added. “Anyone interested in staging a workshop is encouraged to do so without asking permission from anyone.”

Jose Rosales, a senior studying philosophy, said that the equal footing of everyone during Furlough Fest is key to the openness they wish to encourage. “My involvement is just as deep and as crucial as all the other peoples’ involvement,” Rosales said.

A sex workshop concerning sexuality and masturbation will be included with other discussions and workshops offered at the Fest, according to Rosales. A discussion about the book The Coming Insurrection will be included in the event as well as a presentation from a record label showing people how they can run their own independent labels.

People will be camping out in tents on campus and exercising a communal form of living for the three furlough days, Asuzano said. Pamela Chui, a CSUF student majoring in philosophy, was excited about the possibilities at Furlough Fest. “I actually think it’s a really interesting occurrence as far as student activism goes. It’s interesting that students are getting together. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.”

Chui said that it is important for people to understand, “it’s not some kind of like ‘this is us teaching you how to do something’ or ‘this is us trying to organize some kind of rigorous curriculum of how something goes,’ but rather just getting together and exchanging ideas and stuff like that.”

Jose Sanchez, a CSUF English and philosophy major, will be giving a talk on issues concerning the international academic world and what is in store for the future of CSUF.

“It’s more of a communal idea,” said Sanchez. He went on to say that because competition comes along with leaders, everyone in the Furlough Fest is working together as equals across the board.

“I think it’s really important that we show the school that we’re really serious about all this,” Sanchez said, “that we show the community that we can do something, and educate ourselves along the way.”

Asuzano said that the anti-organization of the event serves as a questioning of the systems which enacted the furloughs themselves.

“Furlough Fest is horizontal,”Asuzano said. “There is no top and there is no bottom. It is people in general responding to a frustrating and deaf bureaucracy that exclusively entrusts its power to administrators and managers. Well, that model, the classic hierarchical corporate model so well regarded that it duplicates itself everywhere, appears to be failing us here in the university. So perhaps it is high time to reconsider the rules we play by.”