> September 1 - 7, 2000
>
> Hatching a revolution
>
> How Chapman U. Produced a Socialist Student Leader
>
> by Nick Schou
> [Orange County, California Weekly]
>
> When he was still a wide-eyed high school student growing up in Lake
> Forest, Steve Hatch was like most kids. His main concerns were mundane:
> music, friends, sports and school. All that began to change when his high
> school English teacher posed the following question during a classroom
> debate: "Who here believes that the government really exists only for the
> rich?"
>
> "I was the only student to raise my hand," says Hatch.
>
> Flash forward to the present. Hatch is now a senior at Chapman University,
> where he double majors in history and political science. He is also a
> member of the Young Peoples' Socialist League, a youth affiliate of the
> Socialist Party USA, and chairman of the Orange County chapter of the
> Socialist Party.
>
> As of this month, Hatch is also president of Chapman's student government,
> which makes him the most powerful student at what is arguably Orange
> County's most conservative campus.
>
> "I don't think I'd be a socialist if it weren't for Chapman University,"
> Hatch said.
>
> The fact that Chapman made Hatch a socialist may explain the kind of
> socialist he is. Hatch's approach to socialism is the most inclusive
> imaginable, inspired less by Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto or Leon
> Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed than Upton Sinclair's user-friendly The
> Jungle, which documented an immigrant family's struggle for survival inside
> Chicago's stockyards. Hatch
> also loves the adventure-oriented novels of Jack London, perhaps America's
> most prominent early socialist-and an early critic of the sectarian
> disputes that plagued the American Left throughout the past century.
>
> Hatch says he became student body president at Chapman only after being
> urged to run for the job by friends. His previous experience in student
> government was a brief stint as a member of the student House of
> Representatives -a position Hatch automatically received last year after
> being elected secretary of Chapman's Progressive Student Alliance (PSA).
>
> Hatch helped found PSA during his sophomore year at Chapman. But the idea
> for the group emerged during his freshman year, shortly after Hatch gave a
> speech during an oral communications class and announced to a bewildered
> crowd of 150 fellow students that he was a socialist. "I also denounced
> communism and the Soviet Union," he adds, but that distinction was lost on
> most of the crowd. While the majority of his audience simply stared at him
> in a mixture of fear and loathing, exactly one student cheered.
>
> "That guy turned out to be a member of the Democratic Socialists of America
> (DSA)," Hatch recalls. "At first, we wanted to form a DSA chapter on
> campus. But we knew there was no possibility of that happening because most
> of the people that were interested were either disgruntled Democrats,
> Greens, liberals, anarchists or communists."
>
> Hatch and his friends chose to name the inchoate group Progressive Student
> Alliance, so as not to turn off prospective members who didn't consider
> themselves socialists.
>
> Twenty-five people turned out for their first meeting, but PSA's most
> obvious and immediate impact was on Chapman's more conservative students.
> They quickly formed their own opposition group, the Conservative Student
> Association.
>
> PSA's diversity turned out to be unstable ground for their big progressive
> tent. "There was a group of people in the PSA who were more
> libertarian-oriented," explained Matt Ishii, a sophomore and self-declared
> socialist. "Their main focus was the legalization of drugs. Considering how
> conservative Chapman is, this was a source of contention within the group.
> We had to tone things down."
>
> Ishii said PSA's activities were always relatively modest: no angry
> demonstrations, just a monthly movie night and an occasional political
> debate featuring off-campus speakers. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that
> the group's membership has dwindled to just four people. "Ever since Steven
> got his appointment to the student government, we haven't done anything,"
> he added. "It's hard to gauge
> how successful we've been."
>
> If nothing else, PSA has helped give voice to a minority of Chapman
> students disgusted by what they see as a materialistic student culture that
> eschews intellectual debate while espousing social popularity, wealth and
> fashion. One of those disenchanted students is Gustavo Arellano, a senior
> who serves as Chapman's student director of multicultural affairs. Arellano
> considers himself a socialist and, like Hatch, credits Chapman with making
> him that way.
>
> "The libertarian ideology of the school, which worships making money and
> embraces consumerism, pushes people like me into Leftist causes-in my case,
> socialism," Arellano said. "I always see kids at Chapman University who
> have never worked in their lives, gabbing on cell phones, driving the
> latest cars and wearing top-of-the-line clothes. . . . Most of these kids
> are born wealthy and have no idea of
> real work."
>
> Hatch expects his toughest job as student body president will be trying to
> change the attitudes held by the school's administration-and a majority of
> Chapman's white students-about issues like multiculturalism. Although many
> minority students support the creation of a multicultural center, Chapman's
> administration opposes the idea.
>
> "Students at Chapman-and white people in general-don't even want to talk
> about race issues," Hatch lamented. "But it's really important to educate
> people about what's going on in the rest of the world and why they should
> care. It's a battle."