Take Back Wurster

A school exists first and foremost to support its students, not the other way around. This is particularly essential when the place of instruction also serves as the primary workspace. For students of art, architecture and design, the studio becomes a home away from home, if not the primary residence. We may not require all the amenities of a house, but what we do require above any material needs is the freedom to craft our work in our own way, to discuss our work and ideas openly and to learn on our own terms. Currently, however, there is a move within the administration of the CED to take the control of the studio space out of the hands of those who labor there. A system of rules for use of the Wurster facilities has been instituted which not only offends the principles of free speech that once defined Berkeley, but that shows a complete lack of understanding of why and how we inhabit the studio space. Attempts to impose an artificial order on this space will do nothing but stifle the creative energy of the students. Why are they trying to silence us? The voice of the students is what a school of architecture thrives on. Creative people cannot conform to spatial constraints set by bureaucratic policies. They will always subvert the space, in an effort to make it their own, and to take control of the conditions in which they create. We do not work in an office, yet, and we create in order to learn and to experience the joy of making, not to satisfy requirements or to please the higher-ups. The mess, noise, graffiti, music, conversation, sex, drugs, trash, booze and politics that fills our studios are not bad habits or unwanted by-products of our hectic and stressful lifestyles. They are essential companions, without which we wouldn’t be the designers and artists that we are today. Taking these things away from the students, or forcing them outside the studios is a misguided effort to exert control by the administration. It bears disturbing similarities to the current political situation in our country. For years the student body has been placated, largely by the mind-numbing intensity of studio work and by the general sense of well-being that is promoted among the denizens of Wurster. Despite some small disruptions and irregularities, CED students are astonishingly calm, polite, friendly and obedient. However, we will not stand by and watch the values that they believe in and that this school once stood for be trampled upon in the name of a protocol power grab. It is time to Take Back Wurster.