Gays Build ‘Shantytown’ at UCI : Protest: Activists set up cardboard dwellings to symbolize their demand that the university allow homosexuals to rent family apartments.

Culminating an impassioned week of demonstrations, sit-ins and demands for student power on the normally placid UC Irvine campus, two dozen chanting gay rights advocates set up a makeshift “shantytown” Wednesday as a symbol of protest against the university’s family housing policy.

Charging administrators with discrimination, the protesters marched through campus to demand that the university reverse itself and allow gay and lesbian couples to rent family housing now generally reserved for married couples and their children. At the close of the march, the cardboard shanties went up, to the surprise of passers-by.

The display prompted no hint of change in the position that the administration took on the housing issue last week. But it did drive home a broader point: An apparently growing group of students, replete with their own “alternative” newspaper, are trying to change the image of UC Irvine as apathetic and apolitical, and want to give student activism a good name.

Monday saw a sit-in at UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason’s office. Tuesday brought a rally by about 250 students to demand greater control over how their rising fees are spent on university programs and facilities. Wednesday came the shanties.

And it was just last month that about 300 students--more than ever before--rallied on campus to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and mark their hopes for further progress against racism.

But Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor for student affairs, noting the school’s reputation as apolitical, joked that the school--at least half of whose students are commuters--has had a tough time drawing people for basketball games, much less protests.

Indeed, while some students on their way to classes Wednesday stopped at the shantytown to chat and take a flier, most appeared to walk past without much interest. Nearby, an outdoor band blaring rock songs of the Police and Jimi Hendrix drew more people and often drowned out the protesters. And a few students muttered derogatory remarks about the protesters as they passed.

Still, some students said that the activity in recent weeks marked a beginning.

“Students feel neglected around here, and up until this year, we’ve been kind of sitting back and taking it,” said Susan Barnes, elected president of the undergraduate student government body, called Associated Students. “But now students are suddenly waking up and realizing that this university is here for us .”

Added graduate student Jeff Rouder: “Nothing like this week has ever really been pulled off here since I’ve been around. . . . What we’re seeing here is a university that can’t respond to the needs of its students, and people are getting sick of it.”

As a member of the Social Awareness Collective on campus, Rouder helped organize Tuesday’s “student empowerment” rally, aimed at giving students a greater and more direct say in how their money is spent on such things as the university’s student center.

The anthropology student also helped put together a “pro-active” newsletter last year with $12. The newsletter has grown from 100 photocopies of a single sheet to a multipaged, 5,000-edition publication.

Included in the publication, called “The Generic Alternative,” is a “Political Climate-O-Meter” that rates parking in the chancellor’s reserved space as the ultimate in student activism. The February issue shows the political climate at about 15 degrees, but Rouder says that will rise considerably after this week.

Student leaders said that while the issues of gay family housing and the use of student fees have drawn the most attention, other concerns--such as safety on campus in the wake of several attacks last year, and employee status for teaching assistants--have come together to foster greater activism on campus.

The activity hasn’t gone unnoticed by those in charge.

“The decibel level has been pretty high,” UCI Police Chief Michael Michell said Wednesday as he monitored a raucous noontime sit-in by the gay rights protesters in the lobby of the administration building. “In the 11 1/2 years I’ve been here, I haven’t ever seen (demonstrations like this week). This has been a very quiet campus.”

There have been no arrests, confrontations or signs of trouble during the week’s activities, Michell said, and that was expected to continue for the shantytown demonstration. Police said that the protesters could erect the cardboard shacks but warned them not to sleep in them. Students said they planned to cooperate; they arranged for people to take shifts manning the shanties overnight and through today.

The demonstrations’ quiet tone was in keeping with UCI’s history. Even the turbulent Vietnam war protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s were marked by relative calm in Irvine. While angry, often-violent demonstrations at campuses such as UC Berkeley drew the National Guard, UCI staged peaceful boycotts of classes.

“We don’t want this to be angry and confrontational,” graduate student Lisa Forehan said Wednesday afternoon as she helped organize construction of the shanties. “We’re hoping that in the next 24 hours, the administration will try to make some concessions to us and rectify this situation. All we want is equality.”