Pacific Index

Issue date: 12/4/08 Section: Life

"Fighting injustice" since high school, Katherine Brooks has been an outspoken voice for political awareness on campus.

On a campus that many consider plagued with apathy and complacency, there are few that are passionate enough to act. When it comes to the topics of politics and social justice, they are no exceptions. However, Pacific is not without it's activists.
"Students come to presentations in the UC, and they just look at the stuff, and they feel like they can't do anything," said Katheryn Brooks, senior political science major.
Brooks played the main role in chartering Students for a Democratic Society, a relatively new club on campus. Her interest in politics began in high school, and was cultivated at Pacific.
"I remember I attended a 'veterans against the war' protest in high school, so that was kind of the beginning of it all. I had no idea about the particulars [details] of politics," said Brooks. "I knew I was interested in fighting injustice, but that was it. I didn't know then how expansive that field is."
Brooks came to Pacific with the intent of being a political science major. Her mother cultivated her interest in politics by bringing up a different issue, injustice, or illegality concerning things like the Iraq war, every time they talked.
However, it was also classes like Suppression of Decent by Professor Jules Boykoff, and Gender and Sexuality by Jaye C. Whitehead that influenced her beliefs and aspirations as well.
"One unit in the Gender and Sexuality class was on global capitalism, and how bananas are produced. Women are forced to do awful jobs that involve chemicals that are harmful to their health, but they're still paid half as much as men, so they're forced to make money by prostituting themselves," said Brooks.
"That made me stop buying bananas, because I don't want to contribute to that. I think if students were forced to play the role of the woman [in that situation], they would not be so apathetic."
It was issues like this that inspired Brook to start SDS her junior year, 2007-2008.
"I was really frustrated with the apathy on campus, and I still am," said Brooks. "It's hard to recruit people, but we've really become a lot more organized."
In an attempt to tackle a wide variety of current social and political issues, SDS has organized free speech zones, set up panels, organized a Martin Luther King Day event, invited speakers, and has already lined up a set of speakers for next year.
"I think a lot of organizations that are inclined towards liberal politics don't really remember that in order to accomplish their goals, you need to engage in politics," said Brooks.
Student involvement and political awareness was noticeably on the rise during the 2008 presidential campaign, but Brooks simply wants to see consistency in such outspoken and involved students.
"It's just an election," said Brooks. "We choose who's going to represent us as president, which shouldn't be a big deal, but it is because presidents have started abusing their power.
"I'm waiting to see what Obama does in office, since we don't really have a system to hold him accountable to all the promises he's made. It'd be really cool if all those people who participated in the events on campus would continue to be involved."

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