U. of California Students Protest against 32-Percent Tuition Hikes

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 22 — As we go to press, protests continue to be organized on campuses across the entire University of California system in opposition to the Regents’ raising of tuition costs by 32 percent.

Students began staging protests and demonstrations across the state last Wednesday, after the Regents met in Los Angeles to finalize the implementation of the hikes.

In Santa Cruz, hundreds of students blocked traffic at one of the campus’ main entrances. In Berkeley, thousands of students and faculty members demonstrated in the historic Sproul Plaza and workers from the University Professional and Technical Employees staged a two-day strike.

The protests in Los Angeles have been the largest among all of the campus protests. Among the various campuses that are a part of the UC system, the UCLA campus enrolls a large number of young people from the working-class communities of the metropolitan area. On the day that the Regents met to finalize the tuition hikes, over 2,000 UCLA students protested outside of the meeting, while hundreds more spontaneously gathered at Bruin Plaza in protest.

Police clad in riot gear faced off against protesting students. A media blackout prevented wider publicity of numerous incidents of police violence during the protests.

Fourteen protesters were arrested after the cops began beating, tasering and shooting rubber bullets as students. Facial injuries, and broken hands and feet due to being hit by police batons, have been reported.

In Davis, students continue to occupy Mrak Hall and protest the tuition hikes.

The capitalist media has attempted to portray the protests as the action of a group of “pampered” youth who believe they are “special and entitled to endless conveniences,” as one “middle class” commentator for the San Diego Union-Tribune arrogantly put it.

However, the reality is that a disproportionately large number of students in the UC system are working class. Many of them work more than one part-time job and try to raise a family while also attending school.

These worker-students are going to be affected the most by the Regents’ attempts to make students pay for the $800 million shortfall in funding resulting from the economic crisis and budget cuts made by the state government. In addition, students will face nearly $300 million in other budget cuts, such as laying off teachers, and a rollback in campus programs and activities.

A spokesperson for the UC Regents has insisted that the tuition hikes will only affect students whose family income is over $70,000 a year, with low-income students able to receive grants from the college system’s “Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan.”

However, given that most students had never heard of the plan until reporters mentioned it to them, it is highly doubtful this shadowy fund will be of any help for the thousands of working-class students facing the prospect of dropping out of college.

The capitalist commentators are calling the tuition hikes a “lesson in the real world.” On this, we can agree. This is a lesson in how capitalist society works: you have “equal opportunity” as long as you can pay for it.

As long as capitalism exists, quality education for working people will be out of reach. When capitalist rule is defeated, the road to higher education will be opened.