Hunger Strikers, UCLA Still Stalemated : Education: Parents of protesters appeal to chancellor, but he stands firmly against demand for a Chicano studies department.

Hunger strikers at UCLA entered the second week of a protest over the status of Chicano studies Tuesday as a group of their parents unsuccessfully pleaded with campus officials to meet the demonstrators’ demands.

Parents told Chancellor Charles E. Young in an emotional 90-minute meeting that they were worried about their children’s health.

“I’m really sad and really scared,” said Bertha Lara, whose daughter, Maria, is among the original seven hunger strikers who want UCLA’s Chicano studies program upgraded to an independent department. Nevertheless, Lara did not urge Maria to quit the water-only strike, saying: “It’s my daughter’s decision.”

Nine protesters are now on the strike. Two were under medical observation for faintness Tuesday in their tents pitched near Murphy Hall, UCLA’s administration center. A physician said the participants could face serious health troubles if the protest continues for two weeks or more.

After the meeting with a dozen parents and student supporters of the hunger strikers, Young reiterated his concern for the protesters’ well-being and promised that UCLA doctors would provide any needed aid. But the chancellor, as he has done over the past month, did not budge from his earlier position that he wants to improve the existing inter-disciplinary Chicano studies program rather than make it an independent department.

“I encourage the protesters and their loved ones to reconsider the dangers of a hunger strike,” Young said, promising he would continue to hold discussions with Chicano faculty to resolve the dispute. The chancellor said he felt as if the strikers were holding a gun to his head.

Jorge Mancillas, the assistant professor at UCLA’s medical school who is leading the hunger strike, pledged that the protest would continue even though he nearly collapsed Tuesday. “Our bodies are getting weaker, but our spirits are getting stronger,” Mancillas, 40, said.

UCLA junior Joaquin Ochoa, 21, was in a wheelchair Tuesday because he was having trouble walking after a week without food. He said he remained hopeful that Young would change positions on the department. “I say he can only win by that. He’ll be looked at with admiration by people from all over the country,” Ochoa said.

The parents and protesters got some satisfaction on a related issue Tuesday. Young promised that most of the students involved in a May 11 rally calling for a Chicano studies department would not face expulsion or serious academic discipline and that he is urging law enforcement officials to reduce charges as much as possible. Ninety-nine people were arrested in the ruckus that allegedly caused as much as $50,000 damage to UCLA’s faculty center.

The current Chicano studies program borrows teachers from other departments and is not taken seriously, the protesters say. But UCLA administrators contend that the program is enriched by having experts from different disciplines teach.

The group’s hunger strike was inspired by the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, Mancillas said. Chavez went on three long hunger strikes to demand better conditions for farm workers. One, for 36 days in 1988, left him with permanent kidney damage, doctors said. Chavez died April 22 of natural causes at age 66, and Young’s original announcement about the Chicano studies program came on the eve of Chavez’s funeral, angering Chicano activists by its timing.