A UCLA professor and 6 students have gone days without food. Says Jorge Mancillas, so strong is his belief in the need for a Chicano studies department he’s willing to make the... : Ultimate Sacrifice

It’s the sort of celebrity Prof. Jorge Mancillas never imagined.

He has camped without eating for eight days straight, pledged to starve to death right there on a grassy knoll at UCLA where, until a week ago, he was teaching.

At night, the assistant professor of biology and six students, also on hunger strike, huddle in small tents ill-designed to ward off discomfort and chills. But Mancillas and his band vow they will not relent until Chancellor Charles Young creates a department of Chicano studies--or until they are dead.

To one well-dressed Anglo student passing by the encampment, the idea seems absurd and extreme--and mighty like a publicity stunt. “Probably some charismatic activist lured the kids into this gimmick,” he says.

But Mancillas, 40, says he was not led, nor is he the leader of this event.

“The students were determined; I could not have stopped them. They told me about it and I elected to participate.”

And this is no stunt, he says. “We will die right here in front of Murphy Hall in order to shake people’s consciences, to show the urgency of issues that are tearing our society apart.”

But he says he counseled against starvation: “I had long meetings with the students to explain what it means to starve, what the consequences will be. I have knowledge of human physiology, so I understand the damage and devastating effect this hunger strike will have.” The group decided to permit themselves water.

Mancillas says he is doing this because he was asked 3 1/2 years ago by the chancellor to serve on a committee to decide the best structure for Chicano studies at UCLA. At the time, Chicano studies was an interdepartmental program within the division of social sciences, using teachers from several different departments.

“The chancellor promised that whatever the committee decided, he would do. But when, after many weeks of research and deliberation, the committee recommended (on April 28) that a separate department of Chicano studies be created at UCLA, the chancellor ignored our recommendation,” Mancillas says.

Mancillas and the other hunger-strikers say this is not adequate, especially in a city with 40% Latino population.

On May 11, 83 students who protested the chancellor’s decision were arrested at a sit-in at the university’s faculty center for allegedly having caused $50,000 in damages. All have been released, but charges have not been dropped. Since then, students in favor of a Chicano studies department have staged peaceful daily protests without incident. (Other college students have shown their support; on Saturday, Loyola Marymount University students marched through Culver City. State Sens. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and Tom Hayden (D- Santa Monica), also support a separate department and say they will try to hold up state funding for UCLA until the demand is met.

Mancillas says he has met with Chancellor Young only “a very few times” over the past three years to discuss the problem. “I think he sees our effort as a political challenge. It is not. We are protesting this way because unless we do, life and politics will continue as usual. I do not want that kind of world for my children.” Mancillas has a daughter, 16, and a son, 6, from a previous marriage. A member of the medical school’s department of anatomy and cell biology for the past four years, Mancillas seems an unlikely candidate for such aggressive protest. He says he is “on the tenure track”; he has what appears to be a distinguished academic record.

Dr. Richard Lolley, head of the medical school department in which Mancillas works, did not return calls.

Chancellor Young was unavailable for reporters, his office said.

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Born in Durango, Mexico, where his father was a rural school teacher, Mancillas grew up in Ensenada. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley; a doctorate in neuroscience from UC-San Diego.

He did neurobiology research at the Salk Institute and the Scripps Clinic Research Foundation, both in La Jolla. For three years after that, he did research in England at Cambridge University’s famed laboratory of molecular biology, where Drs. James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA.

One of the main reasons he chose to teach at UCLA, he says, “is the memory I had of a very courageous Chancellor Young, who 25 years ago stood up to the Board of Regents in defense of the academic freedom of Angela Davis. I was only 15 at the time, but I was inspired by his action and have continued to admire him.”

Mancillas hopes “the same courageous chancellor is still there, buried beneath layers of cynicism built up over the years.” But those hopes are slim, he admits.

Mancillas’ parents, ages 69 and 70, have come from Ensenada to stay in their son’s Westwood apartment until the strike ends. They are “in complete support,” Mancillas says.

His daughter, Monica, a student at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, is eerily composed when reached by phone: “I support my father; he’s an absolutely brilliant man. . . . He spoke to me at great length about what is happening, and I am proud of the stand he and the students are taking. I am not prepared for his death and I never will be--no matter how he tries to prepare me. But if the time comes when he has to choose between life and death, I will not ask him to change his decision.”

Mancillas keeps large, framed photos of both his children in his tiny tent. “The hardest part of what I am doing is the thought of leaving them.”

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Scott Waugh, dean of UCLA’s department of social sciences, says he “certainly hopes no one dies” in the protest, and that the school has offered every convenience to the strikers.

“We gave them electricity, we send medical workers to check on their condition, we have extra police protection so that no one bothers them.” They are entitled to starve themselves in protest, he says, but the university has no intention of giving them what they want just because they are doing it. “It’s all very picturesque,” Waugh adds, “but it’s tantamount to someone walking in with a gun to his own head and saying give me what I want or I’ll shoot.”

Mancillas and the others believe the situation is untenable; that it must be changed by people willing to martyr themselves. Mancillas says he is “inspired by Cesar Chavez” and hopes to work in his tradition.

Says Marcos Mapachtli Aguilar, 23, a UCLA senior from Mexicali, who is participating in the hunger strike: “I am committed to dying if that’s what needs to happen in order to prioritize education over profit on this campus.”

Why, Mancillas asks rhetorically, did the chancellor ignore their recommendation after they held such lengthy deliberations.

“The most reasonable-sounding argument the chancellor made was that he wants students in all the conventional departments to be exposed to the field of Chicano studies--and that could best be achieved without a separate department.

“But if you teach at a university, as I do, you realize how hollow that argument is. Courses in Chicano studies must be organized, staffed and taught by a specific department; existing departments have shown very little interest in the subject. Those who volunteer to teach in the (current interdepartmental) program find their efforts perceived as a sort of volunteerism or community service, not as part of their academic responsibilities. Their home departments see it as a time away from their ‘real responsibilities.’ ”

In order to burnish reputations and build careers, Mancillas says, “faculty members must work within their own departments, not ‘volunteer,’ to teach ethnic studies.”

UCLA sociology professor Vilma Ortiz says she supports the strikers and their cause and believes there is “quite a bit of faculty sentiment, even among Anglos,” in favor of the strikers’ position.

Mancillas believes the administration also worries that a separate Chicano studies department would lead to requests for departments in African-American studies and Asian studies. And he thinks that would be just fine. In today’s world, especially in Los Angeles, he says, that would help people understand and appreciate each other.

Mancillas says he is driven in his push for a separate department by the knowledge that “Los Angeles is 40% Latino. It is the main point of immigration from Latin American. It has the second largest Mexican population in the entire world. It was founded by Mexicans in 1781, when the 13 colonies had not yet achieved their independence. The whole southwestern United States was part of Mexico for 327 years before it was annexed to the United States.

“Students who graduate from UCLA should understand this society in which they will practice their professions. Only through understanding can the violence, bigotry and inequality be erased.”