“Tomorrow is the day.”
This was the first line in mass email sent to University of California-Santa Cruz students by the UCSC Strike Committee on Wednesday.
Today is the “National Day of Action for Public Education,” a day in which thousands of students, teachers and workers in the California public school system and elsewhere across the nation are protesting higher education budget cuts and exponential tuition hikes.
Starting in fall of 2010, students from California will pay $10,302 in the equivalent of tuition at their in-state schools, as part of an increase that came soon after state budget cuts threatened the school system’s well-being, The Daily Free Press reported on Nov. 30.
Those protesting are demanding affordable and accessible public education for everyone, the email to UCSC students said. The strike is essentially a movement to boycott tuition increases and to fight the budget cuts.
“People at my campus are shutting down the entrances at 5 a.m. tomorrow so no one can get on campus,” said UCSC freshman Soraya Danesh. “Most classes have been canceled and a lot of students are protesting all over the place. [They also] want to shut down classes and dining halls.”
Some UC students support the cause but are wary of the methods of fighting for it and chose not to participate.
“The UCs are definitely going through a horrible crisis, but unfortunately so is the state of California,” said UC-Berkeley freshman Danielle Ehsanipour. “Unfortunately, some “activists’ are ruining the movement for everybody by breaking into private, unaffiliated businesses and making us seem completely unaccountable. It’s unfair for those of us who really do what to see change and deserve it.”
UCSC freshman Heidi Hillman said though she believes in what the protest stands for, she doesn’t think some of the tactics are necessarily the best way to fight for the cause.
“I completely agree with everything the protest stands for,” she said. “But it’s hard to strike under such conditions. It’s just hard when we are fighting for affordable education, that we are supposed to miss out on our education &- even it is just for a day, you can miss a lot in lecture, especially with finals about a week away.”
Others who are passionate about the cause say the protest are necessary to implement change at the government level.
“What we need right now in the UC system is change, and that is what the students are demanding [today],” said UC-San Diego freshman Melissa Etehad. “As of now they are privatizing our educating and that defeats the entire purpose of a public educaation.”
While the main day of protests were planned for today, there have been numerous incidents on California campuses in the last week.
Last Thursday, The Sacramento Bee reported that UC-Berkeley students who were holding a party to promote today’s protests ended up vandalizing a school building and lighting a dumpster on fire.
“Violence atCal [UC Berkeley] protest disgraceful and unacceptable. Violence and property destruction are not free speech and hurt our cause,” tweeted UC President Mark Yudof on Feb. 26.
On Monday, five UC-Berkeley students were arrested in Sacramento after refusing to leave Assemblyman Jim Nielsen’s office unless there was more of a government effort to increase diversity and preserve funding, The San Francisco Chronicle reported in an article Tuesday.
Nevertheless, UC students said the protests are still planned to happen, and Etehad said these demonstrations symbolize much more change than fighting the 32 percent fee increase.
“It symbolizes a want for equal representation for low-income students who are the most hurt by this fee increase, a demand for the human right of education for all and the idea that this is our university &- public university,” she said.
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