Calif. students protest 32 percent tuition increase

Students at University of California-Berkeley barricaded a classroom building with bike chains, and other students across the University of California system were arrested as they demonstrated against a 32 percent tuition hike approved by administrators.

The protests spanned the whole system, which serves 220,000 students on 10 campuses.

The UC-system Board of Regents, the equivalent of the UNC-system Board of Governors, approved a 32 percent tuition increase for in-state and out-of-state undergraduate students last week in an attempt to lessen the impact of a $1.2 billion state budget deficit.

The fee increase puts the system’s in-state tuition at more than $10,000 for the first time in its history.

A third of the revenue will go directly to financial aid for families with incomes of $70,000 or less, said Leslie Sepuka, the spokeswoman for the UC Office of the President.

“The reason we are undertaking this is to preserve the quality of education,” Sepuka said.

She said that even with tuition increasing, the university system will suffer budget cuts to make up for the lack of funding received from the state.

State funding for the UC system has declined to half of what it was in the 1990s, Sepuka said.

“It isn’t only the students shouldering this burden,” she said. “The entire staff is facing a furlough plan, with pay cuts anywhere from four to 10 percent.”

But students said they feel fees and budget cuts were targeting the middle class.

“Students are definitely still up in arms,” said junior Miranda Henely, a student at UC-Berkeley. “It’s impossible to ignore what’s happening.”

Rumors and videos of alleged police brutality in stemming the protests have circulated widely, further enraging students.

“Police were bashing people’s hands and crushing people’s hands,” Henely said.

Urvi Nagrani, a junior at UC-Santa Barbara, said the protestors at a Board of Regents meeting requested a discussion with administrators but never received a reply.

“They have a great deal of power over the universities,” she said. “But they don’t really have to engage with us or see the effects.”

But Sepuka said there has been dialogue between the president of the UC system, Mark Yudof, and student newspapers. She said conversations like that have made protesting die down.

“I worry it’s just going to run out of steam,” said Stephanie Velednitsky, a junior at UC-San Diego who participated in a sleep-in at a UC-Davis auditorium.

Velednitsky said one fault of the protests were students’ lack of alternate options.

“I feel like a lot of the arguments I heard were just, ‘We don’t want to pay, this is unfair,’” she said.

In an e-mail to students, UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stated that the student protests should not have been aimed at administrators.

“Let us not forget that we are all fighting for the same cause: to maintain the public character of our university by sustaining Berkeley’s excellence and accessibility. ... Let us work together, not in opposition, to move forward our cause,” he stated.



Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.