A panel of professors spoke about the Occupy Wall Street movement Tuesday in Chumash Auditorium.
Religious studies professor Stephen Lloyd-Moffett said in light of the recent movement’s spread to cities throughout the world, the professors looked to address the situation.
“My understanding of the role of education is to make you a better citizen,” Lloyd-Moffett said. “Part of that process is to understand the world as it’s happening.”
To help students understand the issue, Lloyd-Moffett said he sought professors in different fields to speak at the meeting.
“As I became obsessed with thinking about this movement and our relationship with the events that are transpiring, I came to realize that one of the advantages of being in a university is that you’re not alone,” Lloyd-Moffett said. “You’ve got experts in all these different fields, who can help us understand the movement as it’s happening.”
Assistant professor in political science Richard Latner said students should pay attention to the relationship between President Barack Obama and Occupy Wall Street as the 2012 elections come closer.
Latner said there is potential for creative tension between Obama and Occupy Wall Street when election time comes around. He said the two could either help each other or the relationship could go the other way, and that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t want to be co-opted by Obama.
Lloyd-Moffett said he had not participated in the demonstrations here. Lloyd-Moffett noted how tactics used in New York could be successful there, but not elsewhere.
“It’s not foregone that the same tactics will work here that work in New York,” he said.
A theme during the panel was the movement’s breadth beyond politics and economic issues.
“The issues that it’s talking about are not just political issues,” Lloyd-Moffett said. “They’re issues about how we see ourselves and society.”
Business administration freshman Michael Shaner said he was surprised by the fact that the movement was more than just disgruntled people.
Latner characterized the movement as not just dissatisfaction, but also a natural aversion to exploitation.
Some students received extra credit for attending.
“I’m glad professors offer extra credit,” agribusiness sophomore Sean Reish said. “I’d rather have people come and learn who didn’t know about it before.”
Reish said he was pleased to see that the panel was more than an anti-corporate rant.
“I’m very interested in it and mainly wanted to see what it was going to be like and whether or not it would be very biased,” he said. “I don’t think it was.”
He said he did have a criticism of the panel.
“I wish they would’ve dumbed things down,” he said. “They explained things in a long, roundabout way (that) they could have made more clearer in a single sentence.”
However, Latner said he thought the panel was a success because it was productive and addressed the ambiguities and challenges of the movement in an intelligent way.
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