UC Students Fight Back Against Administration’s War on Public Education

Written by Adrian Wilson.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen direct actions, occupations, and militant protests at four University of California campuses in just 48 hours. But given that UC’s bosses are trying to kill public higher education in California, this should hardly come as a surprise.

On Thursday night, 75 UC Davis students occupied Mrak Hall - with 200 more outside in support, facing off against riot police. The UC Davis Student Senate – normally a fairly conservative group – tried to enter the building to join the occupation, but were turned back by the police; they then passed a resolution of no confidence in UC President Mark Yudof. County sheriffs arrested a total of 52 students, all of whom were taken to county jail; the arrestees were still in jail on Friday morning.

Thursday’s protest at Davis is the latest of a wave of actions at the UCs in just 48 hours – coming in response to Wednesday’s disgusting vote by the UC Regents, which was the culmination of their campaign to transform UC into a quasi-private university system.

On Wednesday, in a highly anticipated meeting on UCLA campus, the University of California Regents voted 20-0 to raise student fees by 32% over the next year - with student regent Jesse Bernal as the only abstention. This massive increase comes after the UC Regents already hiked fees 9.3% in May. In Fall 2010, UC tuition and fees will top $10,000 – setting a disturbing precedent for “public” universities in the United States.

But the Regents wouldn’t even have been able to meet without the protection of hundreds of riot police, who were facing off outside against thousands of students trying to disrupt the meeting.

Earlier in the day, 35 UCLA students occupied Campbell Hall, renaming it Carter-Huggins Hall after two Black Panthers murdered there in 1969. They made the following statement:

“We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, we will occupy. We have to learn not to tip toe through a space which ought by right to belong to everyone.”

The focus of the protests then moved to UCLA’s Covel Commons, where the Regents were meeting: fourteen students were arrested, and police – some of which were armed with beanbag guns – beat back other student protestors with batons and tasers, as they tried to enter the building to shut down the meeting. As the meeting ended at 3pm, hundreds of students surrounded the garage, temporarily trapping the Regents inside the building; they were able to leave only under heavy police escort.

Wednesday’s vote – coming on top of the layoffs, paycuts, and unpaid furloughs for staff and faculty in recent months – amount to a declaration of war against public education by UC President Mark Yudof and his corporate lackeys on the UC Regents. And in the 48 hours since then, UC students have answered Yudof’s declaration of war with occupations and fierce protests – fighting for the future of accessible, public education in California.

At UC Santa Cruz, Kresge Town Hall was occupied by 500 students on Wednesday – followed by an occupation of Kerr Hall on Thursday. Students issued a series of demands, including the repeal of the tuition increase, an end to staff paycuts and furloughs, and an apology from the UC Regents for raising tuition in the first place. (Somewhat unlike the UCLA occupation, where students followed the often-heard unofficial motto of the student occupations: “Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything.”)

And at UC Berkeley, Wednesday was a day of protest. It began at 7:30am, with a joint picket of students and UPTE union members. The picket lasted until a noon rally and march by over 2,500 students, which went from campus to Berkeley City College in downtown Berkeley; there, thousands of UC Berkeley and City College students occupied all five floors of the main building for about half an hour. The march then returned to the main administration building, California Hall, where about 500 students linked arms and surrounded the building (while campus administrators then snuck out through the side door). A group of 37 people then occupied the office of the Vice Chancellor for Capital Projects, demanding that money be spent on education rather than on building fancy new buildings and athletic centers; the Vice Chancellor refused to meet with the students, and locked himself in his office until the police stormed the building and forced the protestors to leave.

These protests were just one step in a coordinated campaign that has united undergraduate and graduate students, university staff, and faculty in fighting against UC President Mark Yudof’s use of “emergency powers” to ram his structural adjustment program down UC’s throat. After declaring a one-year 'fiscal state of emergency' in July, Yudof proceeded to cut UC staff and faculty salaries by 8%, force workers to take unpaid furloughs, and lay off thousands of UC workers – and sidestepped the universities’ Academic Senates, which traditionally share governance of each campus with the Regents and administration.

Throughout this process, UC Administrators have sought to convince the public that what they’re doing isn’t that bad. They’ve told us that their structural adjustment program was made necessary by state budget cuts – even though the $115 million in cuts announced in February 2009 represents only 0.6% of UC’s $20 billion annual budget, and is less than the UC schools’ $150 million annual athletics budget. They told us that they have the interests of quality public university education at heart – even though 17 of the 25 Regents work in business or law, while only three are academics. (This could partly explain why UC spends only 18% of its total budget on actual instruction.)

And UC President Yudof says that the only people who are going to be affected by the fee hike are “people making more than $180,000” – but how can someone who makes $750,000 per year have any clue what effect his fee hikes are going to have on lower-income UC students? As UC Berkeley lecturer Michael Cohen puts it:

“We ask [our students], ‘How many of you are going to be affected by a 32% fee increase?’ And many of them—and it is overwhelming the students of color, the transfer students who come from the community colleges, the first-generation college students, the returning students, the student parents, all of them, that universally raise their hand and say, ‘If they raise my student fees over $10,000, I will probably not be back next year.’ And we have to ask, will there be space in the CSUs [Cal State Universities, the second-tier state schools]? They’re cutting 40,000 people from their enrollment. Will there be space from the community colleges? They’re going to vote in January to eliminate their summer quarter, a full 25%.”

And in response, students, faculty, and staff are fighting back.

There’s been some amazing activism going on at the UCs since the beginning of the semester. But the two-day system-wide strike that happened on Wednesday and Thursday – endorsed by the University Professional and Technical Employees and the Coalition of University Employees, as well as by hundreds of UC faculty, who joined students in walking out and picketing on Wednesday and Thursday – is a significant escalation in the struggle against the privatization of the University of California.

These layoffs, furloughs, and tuition hikes are definitely a burden for those who can’t afford it. But they’ve also brought together undergraduate and graduate students, staff unions, and faculty in a way that I’ve never seen at the UCs. And all this is building towards an even more massive statewide day of action on March 4, 2010.

This is a great start for the war to save California public education – but it’s just the beginning.