Disorient UCI! Planning meeting for the 09-10 UCI Disorientation Guide

Tuesday, May 12 • 8:00pm • Anthill Pub, UCI Student Center

Join UCI undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff in the planning of a UCI Disorientation Guide for Fall quarter 2009!

The goal of a Disorientation Guide is to orient new and returning students to a radical education and to possibilities not endorsed by the status quo administration. It will provide the UCI community with intimate knowledge of their vernacular and secret surroundings, providing them with the tools needed to critically assess the educations they are receiving, while giving them avenues to effect revolution in their daily lives. It is also an endeavor for the disorientation collective, forcing us to critically examine the spaces we occupy and identify new opportunities to create ruptures in the existing system.

Disorientation is not so much a guide as it is an on-going project, but in publishing an annual guide we hope to plant the seeds of critical thought and resistance in the incoming cohort of students. In its entirety, it is nothing more than a toolkit which students, faculty, and staff can utilize as they continue their tenures at UCI. So what kind of tools would we include in a Guide?

• Tactical maps of UCI and OC – mapping where weapons research takes place, Acagchemem burial sites, police stations, community spaces
• UC Power Structure
• Know your faculty – radical lecturers, military and animal researchers, and who makes the most money
• Issues affecting the UCI community, including AB540, animal rights, environment, labor, divestment, food systems, etc.  This is a space for campus groups to promote their own issues and campaigns.
• Directory of radical/left/activist groups on campus, and campus resources
• Radical history of UCI and OC
• Ecology of UCI and OC
• Introduction to critical/radical ideas about race, class, and gender that aren’t taught in classes, and critiques of institutionalized education
• What to do when stopped by police

Here are a few examples:
Columbia: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cssn/disguide/disguide02.pdf
Notre Dame: http://www.campusactivism.org/akreider/disorient.pdf
NYU: http://ventriloquismnyc.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/nyu-disorientation-guide-2008/
Harvard: http://www.badideafactory.net/disguide/disorientationindex.htm
Cal: http://www.caldisorientation.org/TableOfContents
UCSC: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/09/29/18450552.php
Others: http://www.campusactivism.org/displaycategory-4.htm

To help plan, design, and write the 09-10 UCI Disorientation Guide, email DisorientUCI@riseup.net, or come to this meeting! The more collaborators the better, and every contribution is vital!

(Statement from Radical Student Union@UCI distributed on email 8 May 2009)

Tags: Disorientation Guides, Student activism, UCI