Vanguard at UC Davis

Students protesting fee hikes and other cuts to education got into a confrontation on Thursday with police as police attempted to block access to the I-80 freeway on-ramp exiting the UC Davis campus.  One student was detained and a number of minor injuries resulted from the confrontation.

The Vanguard spoke with two of the protesters who were up on the front lines of the confrontation.  The confrontation took place right before the freeway on-ramp just past the Mondavi center.

Across the state today, students, staff, and faculty members protested huge cuts to public education and fee increases to students.  The situation in Davis threatened briefly to explode as over 100 students marched to an i-80 onramp and threatened to block freeway traffic.

They were halted by hundreds of law enforcement officers in riot geer.  At one point, pellet guns were fired and batons used in an effort to stop the students.

Students were speaking out in a rally on Wednesday at the UC Davis Campus after yet another round of hate related graffiti and vandalism hit the campus.  Official found swastikas spray painted in at least three additional locations on Wednesday morning and quickly removed them.  This follows the incident of a swastika carved in a student’s residence hall door and the attack on the LGBT center last week.

Statewide there have been a slew of incidents coinciding with heavy cuts and fee hikes to the UC.  On Wednesday, a small but determined group, whose numbers were depleted by the threat of rain, met at the Memorial Union and marched to Mrak Hall.

Dear UC Davis Faculty Members:

On September 24th we began the year by walking out of our classes and work- places in solidarity: students, faculty, workers, and staff who faced furloughs, lay- offs, pay cuts and tuition hikes, all left their buildings, classes and jobs to rally and march together against the privatization of education.

Workers and students showed overwhelming support for faculty grievances that day. We called attention to the lack of budget transparency and to faculty issues around self-governance. When administration claimed the Sept 24th walkout was led chiefly by faculty concerns, we refused to let that claim stand. We insisted we shared one struggle, and wouldn’t be divided by departments, titles, age or salary. We called ourselves equals—and took the future of our education, workplace, and university into our own hands. But since the walkout, the faculty voice has been almost entirely absent from the opposition to student fee increases and worker layoffs.

A Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted 10-0 this week to have the state auditor examine the University of California’s financial practices following complaints and questions by many asking why student fees have gone up consistently while at the same time UC Executives have received lucrative raises and bonuses.

Among the requests of the state auditor will be to: identify the sources of UC’s public funding; review and evaluate the policies and practices UC uses to track and allocate public funds; determine how the UC has spent its state appropriation, student fees, and funds from the federal government; evaluate UC’s practices for non-salary expenditures including travel, consultants, and entertainment; assess expenditures for instruction and identify the average amount per student UC spends on instruction; determine what funds are restricted and how; and examine auxiliary organizations, including expenditures.

I read Dave Taormino’s Op-Ed in the Enterprise today and he raises some interesting points against UC Davis constructing West Village, but also some faulty ones.  But in the end, it was a bit unsettling to me that a developer would be arguing against someone else’s development.  The first question that comes to my mind is that this is an inherent conflict of interest.  At the very least it is a bit disingenuous.

Let me backtrack, recently Mr. Taormino presented before council his own development plan in Willowback.  It’s a small development but drew a lot of complaints from the neighbors and at some point it will come back up.  Giving the housing market right now and the expressed sentiments of the voters, I have to question the appropriateness of the timing of that proposal.

While all of the newspaper headlines presented the gleeful headline, “No Charges Against UC Davis Protests.”  The subtext of that release from District Attorney Jeff Reisig is much more subdued, “DA will monitor future demonstrations.” 

UC Davis announced right before Thanksgiving last week that an agreement was reached whereby the protesters would end their occupation of Mrak which was done peacefully and without incident.

Locally the protests at Mrak Hall have drawn a huge amount of local and regional attention.  UC Davis protesters and administrators met over fee hikes yesterday.  52 protesters were arrested on Thursday night, we reported midday that a number were still incarcerated and they ended up released by 11:20 am.

The caption reads, “this is what democracy looks like,” and across the state, the story is the same, students protesting, barricading, and getting arrested.  For those who worried about the future leadership of this nation, worry not, this generation is just as capable as your own of battling authority.

In response to the 32% student fee hike, there was a massive protest last night that shut down Mrak Hall and resulted in 52 arrests.  Students are now complaining that the arrests are being processed slowly. 

Kristin Koster spoke to the Vanguard from the county jail, although she was not arrested.

It was about 7 P.M. when we got to Mrak Hall (for those of you who don’t know this is the administration building). The ASUCD Senate decided unanimously to move our meeting out to Mrak Hall to stand in solidarity with the students protesting, some inside and some outside, in regards to the UC Regents recent decision to raise fees 32%. All the television networks were there, the police were there, and between two and three hundred students, faculty, staff were there.

After trying to hold an organized meeting on the steps we realized it was too loud to conduct business so we took an hour recess. After speaking with some of the organizers we were ushered to the front of the protest and the President of the Associated Students gave a brief speech.

In the slew of bills signed and vetoed on Sunday, the Governor ended up vetoing three bills sponsored by Senator Leland Yee that would have pushed for serious reforms of UC and CSU including key legislation that would have prohibited executive pay raises during bad budget years at the University of California and the California State University. 

Senator Yee:

“It is deeply disappointing that the Governor wants to ensure top executives live high on the hog while students suffer.  The Governor’s veto is a slap in the face to all UC and CSU students and the system’s low wage workers.  His veto protects the UC and CSU administration’s egregious executive compensation practices and allows them to continue to act more like AIG than a public trust.”

California has stamped out the Station Fire but not the crisis that threatens to engulf the University of California (UC) and destroy a premier higher education system. The UC Regents may have closed the $813 million dollar deficit by securing savings from service reduction ($325 million), furloughs ($203 million), student fee hikes ($203 million), and debt restructuring ($82 million), but they have only started their Sisyphean task, because the preoccupation with “the business” prevents them from extinguishing any fire.    

Certainly, the housing market collapse and the ensuing recession have led the State to the brink of a $26 billion financial abyss. At the brink, legislators have fractiously cobbled a budget that meets a 2/3 majority approval and sustains initiative designated expenditures.  The budget reduces by 25% the 2008 allocation ($3.3 billion), which represents 17% of the total $19 billion budget.  Student fees ($1.6 billion), medical center activity ($6.1 billion), and research grants ($2.7 billion) comprise the other major revenues.

Over 1000 students, employees, faculty members, staffers, and others affiliated with the University filled the East Quad at UC Davis on Thursday afternoon advocating against fee increases that many see as the death knell for public education in California.  Speakers were concerned about talk that UC President Mark Yudoff is moving toward a hybrid public-private university that will make fees that are set to go up as much as 32% in the next year, unaffordable for many.

Organizers and speakers alike pointed to the fact that this was an extraordinary collaboration between students, faculty and staff that in many ways was unprecedented.  All groups seemed very alarmed at the prospect for fee hikes which will make the university unaffordable and inaccessible to many segments of the population.