The model example of military university collaborative research is the inception, design, and creation of the atomic bomb. Conceived and developed by University of California, the creation of the most deadly device ever made was a product of research funded by the military and conducted by an elite group of America's university scientists, professors and graduate students.

Since the Los Alamos Laboratory opened its doors in 1943, every single nuclear weapon built for the United States arsenal was designed at a University of California managed weapons laboratory. The history of the development of Los Alamos and the second National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore laid the foundation for the last fifty years of military research and development conducted on America's college campuses.

As a non-hierarchical, inclusive counter-institution, we represent a concrete actualization of democratic communal empowerment which rejects the restrictions that capital, consumer culture and war have placed on the university’s conception of education. In an effort to move beyond this restrictive paradigm, we have entered into conflict with slaves to a system that cannot compromise its ordinances to accommodate the formation of an authentic community which sustains a vision of ideals outside the limitations of bureaucracy. Although we operate outside the priorities of the University, we seemingly share their self-professed values of “civil debate, open dialogue and alternative educational experiences.� For this reason we must reject the university’s ordinances as they contradict our mutual overarching values. How can the university support free speech and simultaneously define its parameters? How can the university promote “educational alternatives� while imposing ordinances that prohibit a community based on actualizing this principle? An educational experience can hardly be considered “alternative� while it is confined and defined by all the ordinances and structures of the current system.

This Monday will be A18: The Day of Mass Direct Democracy at Tent University Santa Cruz. Take part, and be prepared to make history.

Laurel from TUSC (Tent University Santa Cruz) will be talking tent-in on 101.1 FM and www.freakradio.org on Bathrobespierre's Broadsides Sunday Morning at 9:30 AM.

"United for Safety"

Health & Environmental Conference

Celebrating programs and policies that protect health & the environment