‘Prophets’ Are Feeding UCI the Fax : Education: Art student Manuel Hernandez’s group questions actions of officials in its unsolicited bulletins.

As Manuel Hernandez sees it, it’s no accident that UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Village is cut off from the rest of the campus by Bridge Road. He cites that as one example of how, both by physical design and by bureaucratic decree, the university makes it as difficult as possible for students to communicate with each other.

In an effort to overcome such obstacles as the lack of a central mall on campus and to open a dialogue on escalating student fees and other issues, the undergraduate art student has tried a technological approach.

To get out the facts, Hernandez has turned to the fax.

“It’s hard for students to talk to each other,” Hernandez said. “Our immediate goal was to open up a channel for students to voice their opinions” without administrative interference.

Since April, fax machines across campus have been receiving missives from the group Hernandez helped form as an art project, the Prophets of Profits. At first identified only as “a coalition of students, faculty and staff,” the Prophets have targeted a number of heavy-hitting University of California players in the unsolicited bulletins.

They have questioned the political appointment process for University of California regents (governing body for the nine-campus system) and detailed the business affiliations of all 18 current regents. They published the salary and other compensation of UCI Chancellor (and soon-to-be UC President) Jack W. Peltason and asked fax recipients to fill out a “report card” on his performance. They also printed details of the retirement package for outgoing UC President David P. Gardner.

In addition to printing the raw data, Hernandez and other authors often add questions and commentary. An open letter to Gardner asks him to donate part of what they say is his “million-dollar severance pay” package back to the cash-strapped University of California system.

“What he’s doing really is activist art,” said UCI art professor Daniel Martinez, Hernandez’s faculty adviser.

While Hernandez’s work with the Prophets of Profit is mainly textual, Martinez said it is definitely art, an example of “alternative ways of expression that aren’t about paint, that aren’t about traditional sculpture.”

Hernandez and fellow Prophet Eveline Shih have designed an exhibition around their project. Complete with slides of their faxed bulletins, it is titled “The Trouble With Information in the University of California” and is on display at the UC Irvine Fine Arts Gallery through Sunday.

Martinez, though, said taking the Prophets of Profits communiques out of context and putting them in a gallery setting is “just a courtesy” on the part of Hernandez. “The art itself,” that is, the campus-wide campaign, “is about subversion,” Martinez said.

Said Hernandez, “We had the feeling the administration was a little upset,” but he added that he has received no direct complaints about the content of the flyers. There were complaints from some departments, he said, that the faxes were a “waste of paper” and an inappropriate use of funds; also, Hernandez began sending faxes only at night to avoid tying up fax lines.

Hernandez said that it was determined in a meeting with the university ombudsman that the faxes were not a violation of law or of university policy. The student said he was disappointed, however, that the faxes were not being posted in the department offices, as the group had hoped.

So they opened other channels to stimulate discussion.

One was a bit of guerrilla art, with 100 questions written in chalk on structures all over campus. The questions (such as “Does society tell us who we are?” and “Who has access to the best education?”) were cleaned up by the next morning, apparently by janitorial staff.

The Prophets also started printing a newsletter in late April. They have distributed 4,000 copies of each weekly issue to students and faculty and have invited contributions. Hernandez said members of the group were told they could not distribute the newsletters in the Student Center without registering as an official student organization, but so far the group has continued to circulate the newsletter informally.

Recently, Hernandez and Shih drove to UC Berkeley to meet with physics professor Charles Schwartz, who has participated in numerous protests of university policy during the past 20 years.

Schwartz has since supplied data to the Prophets of Profits newsletter, including a comparison he compiled of the total annual compensation for the president of the University of California (listed as $426,271) versus the salary range for UC instructors and professors ($30,500 to $91,300).

Hernandez’s efforts were sparked by the most recent rounds of fee increases, approved by the regents in January.

The fee hikes have prompted a number of protests at UC Irvine and other campuses. Opponents of the hikes have charged that they will push out some lower- and middle-income students.

While creation of the Prophets of Profits was sparked by the hikes, the newsletters have addressed an increasing variety of subjects, from the role of UCI student government to the recent L.A. riots.

Martinez, who teaches sculpture, said that Hernandez’s work is a reflection of a more activist slant in the university art department since Catherine Lord took over as chairman last year. The same day Hernandez’s installation opened (Tuesday, Election Day) a group project of Martinez’s intermediate and advanced sculpture class was unveiled: the “Stealth Pinata,” a sculpture in the shape of a Stealth bomber that comments on everything from military spending to AIDS research.

“The department has come alive. . . . I find this kind of upheaval a great and positive thing,” Martinez said. “Artists are integral to the next generation. It’s their responsibility and I make sure they understand that.”

Students, Martinez said, “are very interested in what he’s doing.”

* ‘The Trouble With Information in the University of California” is on display in the UC Irvine Fine Arts Gallery through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission: free. Gallery information: (714) 856-6610. The “Stealth Pinata” is on view in the Studio Art Lawn of the UC Irvine Fine Arts Village through June 11.