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An article in the San Francisco Chronicle that this site wrote about last week has sparked confusion and disagreement about the role of the University of California’s president and regents in upcoming organizing around the UC budget.
In the article, published last Thursday, several regents were quoted as saying that they would be participating in the March 4 Day of Action in Defense of Public Education, but that appears to have been a reporting error. According to UC student regent designate Jesse Cheng, the regents will be participating in a separate March 1 lobby day, not the March 4 Day of Action.
The article also raised the question of student activists’ stance toward administrators. The Chronicle quoted Victor Sanchez, president of the systemwide University of California Student Association (UCSA), as saying that he hopes that the regents and students “can meet each other halfway.” The article also suggested that Sanchez and UC administrators “agreed they have a common goal” in legislative lobbying.
But Sanchez, who has been criticized for those sentiments by other activists, claims that he was miquoted and misrepresented. In an email to this site, Sanchez said today that legislators and administrators share responsibility for the current crisis in California higher education, and that neither he nor UCSA have any intention of “letting them off the hook.” Activists “will not,” he pledged, “compromise on our issues for the sake of ‘working together.’”
An open letter from Sanchez to the students of California, released in response to the article, appears below.
