Last week a massive General Assembly on the UC Davis campus called a student strike for today, November 28, on campuses across California. The strike was intended to call attention to police violence in UC, and to highlight student demonstrations against today’s meeting of the University of California Board of Regents.
The UC Regents were supposed to meet earlier this month at the system’s out-of-the-way Mission Bay campus, but that meeting was cancelled in the face of planned student demonstrations. Today’s rescheduled meeting will take place by teleconference, with regents scattered across the state. UC Davis is one of the meeting’s four physical locations, but as of the weekend only the board’s two student members (one of them non-voting) planned to be present at what has become the new center of resistance to the university’s capricious regulations and reprehensible institutional violence.
In explaining why more regents did not plan to be present at Davis today, university spokesman Pete King said that the regents did not want to “jeopardize” the Davis chancellor’s “pledge to students to keep police presence on campus minimal until the campus … begins to heal.”
This is what UC has come to. The university’s regents feel that a small police presence isn’t enough of a barrier to allow them to sit down in the presence of the system’s students. They have, they say, “no expectation of student violence.” The students of Davis have proven their commitment to nonviolence over and over in recent days, even in the face of egregious violence directed against them. But just a few cops aren’t enough cops to allow the regents to come to their campus and hear their voices without fear.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York are shutting down an entire campus building — a huge building — so that they can meet inside. Classes are being cancelled, staff are being placed on leave, a street is being prepared for barricading, all so the CUNY trustees can hold a regularly scheduled meeting.
When the governing bodies of two of the country’s greatest institutions of higher education are literally, physically walling themselves off from the students of those universities, something has gone deeply deeply wrong.
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November 28, 2011 at 12:04 pm
The OccupyUSA Blog for Monday (Nov. 28), With Frequent Updates | The Nation | Make money online information resource.
[…] The profitable Student Activism blog on vital bicoastal criticism currently in Calif and […]
November 28, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Gildas Hamel
Something has gone deeply wrong. Add to it another sign: UC President Yudof is hiring the Kroll Security Group, a financial sector intelligence company already used by 3 UC campuses—parent companies: Altegrity, and Providence Private Equity, the latter an investor in for-profit higher education—to conduct an investigation of police violence at UC Davis. Bob Meister of CUCFA (Council of UC Faculty Associations) has written a letter of protest to President Yudof, available here: http://gildas.ucsc.edu/?p=1528
November 28, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Regents move meet from UC Davis to phones | eats shoots 'n leaves
[…] Read the rest. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); GA_googleAddAttr("theme_bg", "ffffff"); GA_googleAddAttr("theme_border", "cccccc"); GA_googleAddAttr("theme_text", "333333"); GA_googleAddAttr("theme_link", "0060ff"); GA_googleAddAttr("theme_url", "df0000"); GA_googleAddAttr("LangId", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Autotag", "education"); GA_googleAddAttr("Tag", "academia"); GA_googleAddAttr("Tag", "education"); GA_googleAddAttr("Tag", "governance"); GA_googleAddAttr("Tag", "law"); GA_googleAddAttr("Tag", "politics"); GA_googleFillSlot("wpcom_sharethrough"); Share this:StumbleUponDiggRedditFacebookTwitterLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in Academia, Education, Governance, Law, Politics. Bookmark the permalink. ← Judge kills Citi settlement, cites right to know […]
November 28, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Milan Moravec
Californians subsidize the tuition of foreign and out of state students. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) displaces Californians qualified for public university education at Cal. for a $50,600 payment by a foreign student.
The need for transparency at UC Berkeley has never been so clear. UC Berkeley, # 70 Forbes ranking, is not increasing enrollment. Birgeneau accepts $50,600 foreign students at the EXPENSE of displaced qualified instate Californians (If amortization of fixed assets funded by Californians are included in foreign and out of state tuition calculations out of state and foreign tuition would pay more than $100,000+ and would NOT subsidize instate tuition)
UC Regent Chairwoman Lansing and President Yudof both agree to discriminate against Californians for the admission of foreigners. Birgeneau, Yudof, Lansing need to answer to Californians.
Opinions make a difference; email UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu