Berkley Center

When should I separate supporting my Chilean classmates and friends from pursuing my own educational goals as a foreign exchange student? The night before a biogeography test this week, I learned via email that students had decided to strike the following day. With an 8:15 a.m. class and a strike affecting classes after 10 a.m., the choice to attend was individual. Emails from classmates called on all of us to support the sentiment of the strike and boycott our class. Thinking of my own academic schedule in the coming weeks, I just wanted to take the test and move on.

The strikes and protests had grown frustrating to me. Students didn’t seem to be making progress, merely utilizing the same methods every few weeks. Boycott classes for a day, and unite the universities of Valparaíso to march through the main plaza and gather together. The police, clad in riot gear, wait anxiously on the periphery of the central protest. Once a few instigators start throwing rocks or starting fires, the police clear the area with force, tear gas, and any means they deem necessary. I didn’t understand how student activists could call this repeating process any form of progress.

I decided to put my own complaints aside and honor the strike of my classmates. We met outside the classroom to talk to the professor and organize a new schedule. The mobilization and organizational communication among Chilean students drive their efforts for reform. Once we settled everything as a class, I asked a friend of mine what the student leaders hoped to get out of another strike. “A new agreement among CONFECH and a new message to the Ministry of Education,” she replied. (CONFECH—or Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile—is a national organization of student leaders.)

At that point, I realized that it was unfair to paint the student movement in terms of the conflicts or hooliganism that pop up on a newsreel every few weeks. Chilean students make their fight for educational reform a central part of their university identity. Through rallies, marches, and everyday conversations, Chileans use this movement to form a stronger community—a generational unity our own university students lack in the United States.

To be fair, the strength of this reform movement lies in the simplicity of its general purpose. A banner carried by my oceanography classmates put it clearly: “I am not a Communist nor an anarchist, I only recognize the need for a free, quality education.” Coming from an American system where private universities are soaring past $60,000 per year, this seems quite a fantasy. Nevertheless, Chilean students reference the mostly free public university system in neighboring Argentina as a worthy standard.

While the goal of free education remains clear, Chilean students often become lost in finding the appropriate means to that end. I am struck by the contrast between widespread student mobilization and the disconnection between students and faculty. Before a march last month, my geography professor made a simple request of our class: “You can’t keep marching to effect change. If you want to keep moving forward, at the very least ask for our help.” To make their cause a strong one, students often antagonize older generations as the tacit partners of Sebastian Piñera, the business-minded Chilean president.

At Georgetown, I could never imagine such a politically conscious student effort, thousands of students marching together, without a supportive or guiding faculty presence. The Chilean students desire direct dealings with the Ministry of Education, and they seek to keep politics off their agenda. Pinguinos (the nickname for Chilean high school students) who led the 2006 protests among secondary students now venture into left-wing politics, and university students hesitate to align with them.

Camila Vallejo, the face of the 2006 movement, now garners press attention as the new leader for a nascent generation of liberal Chilean politics. My host father, a university professor, was quick to distinguish her role as a student leader: “Camila? To my students, she’s not one of them. Merely political now.” While the student political sentiment denounces even the center-right politics of Sebastian Piñera, students have yet to subject their movement to the deals and handshakes that divide the left-wing national parties.

Since tensions erupted into protests in 2011, each month brings further student activism with little response from the national government. At this point, many of my classmates have lost essentially a full semester or even a year of their education from last year’s prolonged strikes. The movement could soon reach a critical point, where Chilean students must decide to either put their education on hold or continue without the standard they seek.

In my few months experiencing this educational culture, I’ve already questioned whether a free education represents an attainable goal in this movement. Whether Chilean students share this sentiment or not, their continued organization and persistent convictions send a strong message for educational reform.