Students Wrestle Big Issues at UCI

It was a standoff between the thirst for knowledge and thirst of the literal kind.

Anthony Ngubo had finished his talk on South Africa a good half-hour earlier, but students pursued him from the lecture hall, down a hallway and cornered him at a drinking fountain. As he leaned forward, hoping to soothe his overworked vocal cords, they continued to fire questions:

“Why is Israel so closely tied to the government of South Africa?”

“What would be the consequences for blacks (if South Africa promptly eliminated apartheid)?”

“A good bunch of kids,” Ngubo said later, bemused by the enthusiasm of his young interrogators--Southern California high school juniors and seniors who, for the past 10 days, have lived on campus at UC Irvine as part of the university’s second annual Knowledge and Social Responsibility Program.

But Ngubo, who spent most of his life in South Africa and now teaches at Mira Costa College in Oceanside, said that he was heartened by the students’ dogged inquiring. “My hope is that young people will take up apartheid and make it a public issue here in the United States,” he said. “Young people can contribute a great deal.”

That was exactly the thinking of the people who put together the UCI program, in which 61 students--selected for their academic performance and leadership skills--live, virtually around the clock, with weighty world issues.

“We’ve tried to create something like a boot camp of the mind,” said program director Manuel Gomez. “A child who learns to stand never again crawls. A child who learns to speak never again babbles. We want these students to learn to stand up for their beliefs and to act on them with intelligence.”

“I’ve had complaints from students who say the schedule is too much,” said Gerardo Mouet, coordinator of the program, which is co-sponsored by UCI’s Educational Opportunity Program and the Orange County chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. “A lot of people said the students were going to burn out.”

Instead, most students get caught up in the momentum of the 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. routine, Mouet said. Even after the formal sessions end, students may stay up till 1 or 2 in the morning, sprawled on the furniture and floors of the dormitories, savoring their first taste of college-style rap sessions.

‘Thinking Never Stops’

“The thinking never stops,” said Josslyn Luckett, a senior at Irvine’s Woodbridge High, who attended the initial program last summer and came back this year to serve as a “rat” or resident aide trainee. “Lectures, workshops, lectures, workshops. . . . We’re all mentally fatigued.”

“At night, you get going on topics that are so controversial, you’re bound to keep talking,” added Mary Camacho, another trainee from Garden Grove High School.

The students, who “graduate” today, have played a bit of volleyball, shot some pool and been swimming a few times. They’ve seen a performance by Ray Charles, staged a talent show of their own, and watched some films: “The Day After Trinity” (the nuclear arms race), “Ballad of an Unsung Hero” (a Mexican immigrant’s experiences in the United States) and “The Chosen” (Jewish culture in New York City).

But mainly they have worked, they said, ticking off “value clarification exercises,” daily workshops on history, social sciences and communication, formal panel debates on issues of their choosing--immigration, euthanasia, abortion--and a litany of speakers who bombarded them with information and ideas about Central America and immigration, the situation in South Africa, Indochinese culture and the nuclear arms race.

Although speakers representing both sides of the nuclear arms debate were featured, students generally agreed that the program emphasized a liberal viewpoint on the issues. They also agreed, though, that the program’s main message was to approach issues with an open mind.

Participation ‘Keeps Democracy Viable’

“We want (the students) to have the courage to test their assumptions,” Gomez said. “No other generation has had to face the reality that we leave as a legacy to our youth. . . . One of the primary responsibilities of leadership is to be able to act on our convictions. In that sense we’re meeting one of the fundamental purposes of education in a democracy. Civic participation is one of the bloodlines that keeps a democracy viable.”

As might be expected, “social responsibility” was a recurring theme.

When a student demanded to know why some South Africa blacks ignored their plight and others sided with their oppressors, Anthony Ngubo attributed it to human nature. “Look at what happened in France under Nazi Germany,” he said, nodding when a black girl suggested that the comparison also applied to America in the 1960s, when many blacks refused to get involved in civil rights issues. The students heard another version of the same lesson a few days later. In a talk titled “Understanding the World Through Literature,” a UCI professor read from Eugene Ionesco’s “The Rhinoceros,” explaining to the students that the nonchalance of the French watching their neighbors sprout rhino horns in that absurdist play could be seen as a metaphor for the passivity of some Frenchmen during World War II.

In the dorms, where the walls are plastered with photos of world leaders, news clippings and slogans such as “Dare to be different,” the students met in “teams” and got together informally to sort out their new knowledge and test their beliefs.

“(The program) is hard, but it makes you think, and that’s something I don’t usually do during the summer. . . ,” said Erin Bialowas, a 16-year-old from Fullerton Union High School.

“I’ve loosened up on a lot of my views,” said Jay Deubler, 18, a senior at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, who describes himself as a “hard-core conservative.”

High Fives With Fellow Conservatives

“When I came here, I was very set in my ways. Now I’ll look at the other side of an issue. I usually go back to my conservative view, but I’ve learned to appreciate other people’s ideas,” he said, pausing to give high fives to three other Orange County boys who also said they were part of the program’s “conservative” minority.

“If you talk to a lot of teen-agers now, all they care about is money--money for cars and money for clothes,” said Lisa Collins, 16, who attends a magnet high school in the San Fernando Valley.

“If you ask them what they want to do, they say, ‘I want to be a millionaire,’ ” added Alisa Tannirat, 17, of Irvine High as she lounged in the dorm living room with four new friends. In high school, “all anyone talks about is music, clothes, and where’d you get your hair done,” Alisa said. “It seems to take so long to get to know each other. But here, you’re talking about things that matter.”

The students added that the experience of living in a peer group provided insight into “social responsibility,” which Alisa defined as “a commitment to the rest of our species.” For instance: “If there’s only one outlet, and you plug in both your hair dryer and your curlers, it affects both of us,” Alisa said.

Keith Nathaniel, who attends Compton High, found living with such a socioeconomic mix “fantastic.”

“I’ve always wanted to experience other cultures, how they live,” said Keith, who is black. “We had a couple Anglo-Saxons (at Compton High), but they graduated last year.”

Now Keith plans to go back to Compton and “take a stance in my community. I’ll establish myself first, and then let other people know about what happened here--maybe help them to see both sides of an issue.”

Far-Reaching Goals

Other students had already formulated more far-reaching plans.

Andy Lohadsirichai, of Santiago High in Garden Grove, plans to get a degree in political science, return to his native Thailand, “get rich as quickly as possible” and use his money to clean up government corruption there.

Hoaithi Nguyen of Los Amigos High School in Fountain Valley said she’ll get a law degree at University of California, Berkeley, work for a while in the Vietnamese community in the United States, then return to Vietnam “to organize another revolution--and this time we’re going to do it right!”

Francesca Enriquez, 18, a senior at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa who moved to the United States from Mexico City seven years ago said she, too, had come to believe she could help change the world, largely because of her own transformation in the program.

“When I first got (into the UCI program) I was scared and nervous. It seemed impossible, like a dream. It seemed like I had been asleep all this time. The only issue I was aware of was immigration. I didn’t read newspapers or anything. I had ideas but no facts. . . . I was really shy. . . .

“Now, when I talk to people about immigration or South Africa, I’ll have facts to back up my opinions. . . . I won’t be afraid to speak up any longer. I’ll be brave.”

That’s what “social responsibility” means to her now, Francesca said. “I finally feel like I’m part of this country.”