The Berkeley and Pitt hunger strikes reflect a trend in university activism toward myopia. Big-fuss, small-cause protests are nothing new -- it's their ubiquity these days that's changing the tenor of campus activism. Unlike the protests of the '60s and '70s against the Vietnam War, or even the South Africa divestment demonstrations in the '80s, the most virulent campus activism of the 1990s is remarkably self-focused. Students do not bring the world into the campus, but focus their energies on the educational politics and administrative policies of their own universities. But the Berkeley and Pitt strikes also differed from one another in telling ways. Both groups of student activists resorted to fasting after more benign methods of protest had failed, but even this move didn't ensure success. One strike led to a dizzying -- some argue deceptive -- triumph; the other to deafening silence.

The countdown to the UC hunger strike began when Berkeley administrators announced a 15 percent reduction in the number of ethnic studies classes available next semester, and students decided it was the last straw. Previous straws had included: the cutting of one-third of the overall ethnic studies budget, the failure to fill the four vacated spaces in the department's faculty roster, the lack of a full-time tenured professor in the Native American studies program and the decision to have only one full-time tenured professor in Chicano studies after next year. Calling themselves the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) -- a reference to the group leading the 1969 strike responsible for ethnic studies' conception -- the angry students began fighting back.

On April 14, the TWLF took over Barrows Hall, the building that houses the Ethnic Studies Department. Ironically, the 10-hour occupation did little more than force the cancellation of classes. Campus police cleared the protesters out of the building later that night, making 43 arrests and drawing complaints of excessive force. Days later the demonstrators issued a list of demands for UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl: new tenure-track professors in each ethnic studies department, replacements for those who left the departments due to retirement or denial of tenure, the establishment of an Ethnic Studies Research Center and a Multicultural Student Center and an allotment of spaces in the admissions process designated for each Ethnic Studies department. "Today Ethnic Studies is near extinction," demonstrators wrote in a public statement.

Fifteen days after the Barrows Hall takeover, the demands stood unacknowledged and hundreds of students gathered outside the offices of Berdahl and Provost Carol Christ. At the center of the group stood six students -- including one from San Francisco State University -- who'd stopped eating to emphasize their commitment. They vowed they would go hungry until the demands were met.

During roughly the same period, 20 students on the other side of the country had been similarly engaged, having taken up a cause born a few years earlier. In January1996, Deborah Henson, a legal writing instructor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, filed a complaint with the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission against the university, claiming that the school's refusal to extend health benefits to her lesbian partner constituted a violation of the city's Human Relations Ordinance. Had Henson's partner of nine years been a man, he would have received the benefits under Pennsylvania's common-law marriage policy. The university, which receives substantial funding from politically conservative donors, dismissed Henson's complaint. Pitt's policy, says university spokesman Ken Service, is in accordance with state law.

In February of this year, students rallied outside the office of Chancellor Mark Nordenberg in protest of Pitt's policy. By this point, the university had figured the best defense was a good offense, and was responding to Henson's ACLU-backed lawsuit with an aggressive assault on the city of Pittsburgh's existing anti-discrimination ordinance, which does afford civil rights protections to gays and lesbians.

When police arrived and threatened to arrest the rallying students, the group dispersed, only to form the Equal Rights Alliance days later. Over the next few weeks, the ERA dedicated itself to arranging a meeting with the chancellor and a public forum with the school's Board of Trustees. On April 12, with these demands still unmet, 13 ERA members stopped eating.

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