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Students are conducting administration building occupations in at least seven eleven of the 23 campuses of the California State University system. The student activists are protesting budget cuts and demanding the resignation of the Cal State chancellor, Charles B. Reed.
Reports on Twitter show that occupations are currently underway at San Francisco State, Northridge, Sacramento, Monterey Bay, East Bay, Pomona, and San Jose. Activists are tweeting live from the scene of the various occupations using the #Apr13 hashtag.
I’ll be liveblogging as the situation develops, so be sure to check back in over the course of the afternoon and evening.
Update: 4 pm Pacific Time | The occupations currently underway are part of a statewide day of protest throughout the CSU system. According to this article, student/faculty demonstrations were planned for all of the Cal State campuses today.
4:10 pm | CSU Fresno students held an occupation this afternoon, bringing the total to eight campuses. According to a report from @alexandrasaras on Twitter, about eighty students participated, shutting down at least part of the building for about two hours. The CSUF president wasn’t on campus today, but protesters have been promised a meeting with her tomorrow.
4:50 pm | Looks like most of the occupations are winding down, with students making plans for future actions in coming days and weeks. Reports on Twitter suggest that there have been occupations at as many as eleven CSU campuses this afternoon, with a twelfth — Long Beach — seeing the admin building shut down to keep students out. More soon.
5:40 pm | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says eight hundred students marched on the administration building at CSU Long Beach. News reports are also coming in from San Jose, Bakersfield, San Francisco, and Stanislaus, among others.
6:00 am | Although almost all of yesterday’s occupations ended voluntarily after a few hours, students at Sacramento State kept their occupation going overnight. They’re still there, and are gearing up for a Day Two rally when the administration building officially re-opens at seven o’clock. Local media are apparently on their way.
Seven students were arrested yesterday at a demonstration against a ban on the admission of undocumented students to some state universities in Georgia. All of those arrested are reportedly undocumented themselves, and they may face deportation as a result of their protest.
The arrests came at the end of a rally and march that drew more than a hundred people in support of the DREAM Act and in opposition to a ban on admission of undocumented students to University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia College & State University and the Medical College of Georgia. The students called upon GSU president Mark Becker to refuse to comply with the ban, which was implemented by the state board of regents last fall.
Only five of the nearly forty state colleges and universities in Georgia are covered by the ban, but new regulations require all public colleges and universities in the state to determine students’ residency status. Undocumented students in the state are charged out-of-state tuition, however long they have lived in Georgia.
Seven of the nine students who “occupied” a high ledge on the face of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall last month have been charged with trespassing.
The Wheeler ledge action was the first Berkeley protest in recent memory to end in a negotiated settlement with the university, as administrators agreed to drop conduct charges against students who had participated in previous protests … and to forego such charges against the ledge protesters themselves.
But although Berkeley’s chief of police apparently promised one student that he would recommend against criminal charges, that promise was not part of the formal agreement. The students were cited and released when they came down off the ledge, and misdemeanor charges of “trespass with intent to interfere” were brought yesterday.
The seven students who now face charges have previously been arrested in Berkeley protests. The other two, who have not been arrested in the past, were not charged.
See my previous post on the ledge occupation for more on that action.
As noted earlier this week, some activists have called for a third March Day of Action in defense of public education today, building on the protests of March 2 and the high school walkouts of March 11. Today’s actions, whatever they may be, build on yesterday’s protests at the New York state capitol and the ongoing occupation — launched earlier this week — at the University of Minnesota.
I’ve heard about some stuff that’s on tap for this afternoon, but given the nature of the call, I expect that there may be surprises as well.
I’ll be updating as the day unfolds.
Students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities launched an “open and soft” occupation of the university’s Social Sciences Tower yesterday. Though the building was officially scheduled to close at 11 pm, they were able to stay through the night, and they seem to be consolidating and expanding their presence today.
The group has a blog and a Twitter account, both set up before the occupation. They released a list of demands this morning, and a schedule of activities for the day early this afternoon. They’re planning what one of them calls a “webcam date” with students occupying a building at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and tonight is going to be movie night, too.
Oh, and someone in Iowa sent them pizzas for lunch. Seems like a pretty good day so far.
studentactivism.net 
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