Fee hikes bring student protests back to California universities
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1210/p02s30-usgn.html
Steep fee hikes at California universities have triggered student protests
and sit-ins across campuses, on a scale reminiscent of the 1960s.
By Michael B. Farrell
December 10, 2009
San Francisco
Riot police on campus. Student sit-ins and poetry readings. It seems
like the 1960s, but these are common scenes today on California
campuses as students continue to protest large fee increases across
the state's university system.
On Thursday morning police arrested 33 protestors at San Francisco
State University after students had barricaded themselves inside a
campus building. That school is part of the California State
University system, which is raising undergraduate fees by about
$1,000 a year, cutting enrollment by 40,000 students, and forcing
employees to take furlough days across its 23 campuses.
Over at the University of California, Berkeley, students have amassed
in Wheeler Hall in what they are calling an "open occupation."
They're sleeping in the building and holding forums and workshops,
though they have yet to completely take it over as they did in
November, right after university regents agreed to a 32 percent fee hike.
Both university systems are facing tough economic realities. The
state cut funding at the two systems earlier this year by 20 percent
to pass a balanced budget.
The resulting school fee hikes have provoked among students the sort
of unified outcry and activism not seen since the 1960s. The San
Francisco and Berkeley protests follow a string of actions by
students at Santa Cruz and Los Angeles. At the University of
California, Santa Cruz, students occupied a building for a week in
September and again in October.
But unlike the 1960s, when free speech, civil rights, and antiwar
movements roiled campuses, today's students are rallying against
things that have a more direct impact on them. Many are the
middle-class children of immigrants who are already working jobs and
receiving financial aid to pay for college. The recession also means
graduating students face the worst job market in years.
Indeed, the similarities between the 1960s' protests and today's are
"easily exaggerated," said David Hollinger, professor of history at
Berkeley, in an e-mail. "By and large, 1960s campus protests were not
chiefly directed at issues in higher education as such. Now, the big
issue is taxpayer support for higher education."
What's more, the students and administrators largely find themselves
on the same side of the issue, he said.
"If someone occupies a building and the cops are called, everyone
gets excited about that and too easily looses track of the fact that
the administrators who call the cops and the people who occupy the
building are both committed to the same large goals," said Professor Hollinger.
Still, there are some parallels between today's protests and those of
the 1960s, says Lisa Rubens, a research specialist at the Regional
Oral History Office at Berkeley.
"These student have certainly invoked the free speech movement in
trying to save the university," she says, referring to the protest
movement at Berkeley in the mid-1960s that aimed to overturn school
limits on political speech.
She sees a similar commitment today to upholding the broader goals
and "the commitment to maintaining the public university."
One of the biggest differences, though, can be found in the types of
students protesting.
"You are seeing a kind of diversity in the student body that wasn't
typical in the 1960s. Many of these students are the children of
immigrants so they are cognizant of what kind of burden [the fee
increases are] is going to put on their families," she says. "There
is a keen sense of being on the edge."
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See also:
Anger and anxiety over fee hike at University of California
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1120/p02s19-usgn.html
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