U. Minn. students threaten hunger strike

The Minnesota Daily MINNEAPOLIS (U-WIRE) -- Never has Ben Baker gone for more than half a day without eating. The University of Minnesota senior Chinese major is hypoglycemic and his hyperactive metabolism requires him to eat every few hours or he will faint. Yet Baker is so disgusted with how he sees university officials interacting with Minnesota's Chinese program that he is willing to participate in a hunger strike to incite the administration to action. The hunger strike and an accompanying rally and petition signing began at noon yesterday. In total, 22 members of the Chinese program and the wider university community were planning to fast. "I think that would be absolutely regrettable," Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Dean Steven Rosenstone said of the strike. "The college is not going to make its decision on the basis of who talks the loudest, marches the longest or threatens the most." The students are fasting because past negotiations with college officials have failed to remedy understaffing in the program, said Benjamin Ridgway, a third-year Chinese language and literature graduate student. Protesters say they will halt the strike when the university advertises for a second tenured Chinese literature professor. "We have had innumerable meetings with the dean over the years. We want action, not rhetoric. We've had rhetoric for a long time," Ridgway said. Rosenstone said all the prospective candidates to teach in the Chinese program either turned down the position or were deemed underqualified by the current faculty. Advertising for more faculty members is inconceivable, he said, because, "we can't make more offers than we have people to fill the positions." The students chose to protest with a hunger strike because of its association with China. They were inspired in part by the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 because of the parallel with "students protesting an oppressive bureaucracy," said third-year Chinese graduate student Alexei Ditter. The students say their starvation is a metaphor for the starving of their minds and educations. They choose to deprive their bodies of resources like food to symbolize the alleged lack of resources in the program. "When you don't feed the students, gradually they get weaker and collapse," Ditter said. "That's what's happening to our program." The Chinese program has one tenured faculty member and two temporary instructors for 21 majors and students planning a Chinese major. In the 1996-97 academic year, about 230 students took classes in the program. "Every single program in this university has not had the full resources they would really like," Rosenstone said. In planning the fast, the students consulted a nutritionist to learn the dangers of starvation. The protesters planned to drink fluids and monitor their weights daily. On such a liquid diet, humans can survive for close to 40 days, said Allen Levine, director of the Minnesota Obesity Center.