UC Santa Cruz Shut Down By March 4 Protests?

It is true that both entrances are blocked off and that a message was sent out to all UCSC students as well as a phone call. It is also true that cars have rudely tried to break through barriers hitting people and there for students have taken the liberty to take pictures of the license plate of the car. I window shield was hit by hagar but after the attempt of the driver hit someone trying to get by.

What might not be clear to people outside of Santa Cruz is that the protesters shut down all of High St, not just the campus entrances. This is a big hassle for the towns of Felton and Boon Doon, for which this is their primary connection to the town of Santa Cruz.

I don’t think anyone would try to force their way thru a crowd just to get on campus, but if they are trying to get home to their kids, or pick their kids up from school they might get a little crazy. Tell a mom she can’t get to her baby because you’re protesting a fee hike and you’re looking for someone to get hurt. Just one man’s opinion.

Brilliant. Who is suppose to pay for YOUR education? I am broke and my wife and I PAID our way through school.

This is the spoiled generation. Sorry, but no one owes you anything, despite what you have been told.

The point of the protest is to block the UC from running. It’s sad that not a lot of the students understood this, or why we were doing it, before it started. But the reasoning behind the protests today is simple: The UC has been taking advantage of our money, and the state’s money, and is well on the way to privatization; it is turning the University from a school into a business where corporate interests are given first priority and education second; for example, UCLA is having to lay off so many of its temporary workers (which are largely responsibe for teaching writing and language) that it has cancelled its writing requirement. This means that students will graduate with a degree from the Univesity of California Los Angeles without knowing how to write. Since the original goal of the UC was to ensure inexpensive higher education for the public, privatization simply does not make sense. State funding in the UC, as many know, has gone down by 4.1% this year, yet when you look at raw figures, you should also notice that the UC has MORE MONEY THIS YEAR THAN IT HAS EVER HAD BEFORE. But despite this fact, in the past 5 months, fees and tuition have increased over 40%. How does this make sense? Where is our money going? Obviously not back to us, obviously not to the workers who are being laid off, and obviously not to the faculty who are forced to take furloughs. Maybe it’s going to fund the 4 million dollar ADDITION to Yudof’s retirement package, but even that doesn’t explain it; and we will never be able to tell if the UC won’t open its books to the public. This is where our problem lies, and this is what we want changed. We want to UC to restructure itself, with the interests of students as its FIRST prority. The idea behind the protest, then, is that the UC needs students and workers to support it in order to run, but from the way it treats us, it is clear that it has forgotten this; so today we made it clear by withdrawing our support for a system which no longer works for our interests, in the hope that the UC will recognize that it NEEDS our support, and will reprioritize so that we an get the educations we deserve at prices that we can afford.

Jeff; I think you mean Bonny* Doon. Are you sure you understand what’s going on?

Also, the protestors were letting any people through as long as they were not going onto campus. The point was to shut down the campus; not the city, and that is what we did.

We have had to pay for our educations, and many of us will continue to do so, via huge amount of loans. How, exactly, is a lifetime of debt equal being spoiled?

I feel for you and your wife. It sounds like you’re in the situation many of us have been in (I’m an alum now). Wouldn’t you prefer that tuition was free, as intended in the Master Plan for Higher Ed in California?

Do you feel that because of the struggle you had to pay for school, and the fact that you may have done it without any complaints, it suddenly invalidates any protests from students wishing to make their own educations affordable? Don’t you hope that your children, and grand-children will some day be able to afford a public education in CA?

Where should this money come from?

Some places to start:

– An oil tax (TX and AK have one, why not us?)
– A salary cap (why should someone in higher ed earn more than $100k a year? Right now, there are thousands of UC employees that make over $200k/year.)
– Reversal of tax cuts on corporations. California has some of the wealthiest, most profitable companies in the world. Why can’t they pay their fair share?

Thanks! Constructive criticism is always apprciated. By “deserve” I did mean “paid for and struggled for;” I will try to be more precise in the future.

I am glad that you support the efforts of students and workers to seek positive change in the UC system, and, though I didn’t spend the time necessry to explain it, in society’s perspective on higher education in general.

As an alumna of UCSC and former grad student and instructor at UCI, I support the March 4 actions by students throughout the country. I attended UCSC when we had no tuition at all, and California’s educational system was the model for the world. Later, I struggled with my students during the 1980’s when fee increases, part-time instruction and the road to privatization began. Those who borrowed from banks for their education since then have felt the oppression of this move, and I hope they take a second look at California’s crumbling educational system. I live in Washington state now where my son participated in similar protests on Thursday. We need to work together to overcome the inequity, the declining quality and reignite the intellectual rigor our students work so hard to sustain.