QUOTE
As the University of California’s Board of Regents met Thursday at U.C.L.A. and approved a plan to raise undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — 32 percent next fall, hundreds of students from campuses across the state demonstrated outside, beating drums and chanting slogans against the increase.
Isaac Miller and Irene Van, who traveled to U.C.L.A. late Wednesday night in a bus caravan from Berkeley, said they worried about how higher fees would affect illegal immigrant students, who are not eligible for financial aid, and minority students, already dwindling in number since Proposition 209 prohibited affirmative action.
“Diversity is central to this,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s at stake here.”
Mr. Miller and Ms. Van wore shreds of the red armbands adopted at a Sept. 24 walkout, when more than 5,000 students demonstrated outside Sproul Hall at Berkeley.
After Thursday’s vote, as news trickled out to students rallying outside, the chants grew louder and students linked arms to block regents from leaving the building. The police intervened, and as one regent left, about 100 students clustered around him, yelling “Shame on you!”
Mark Yudof, the university president, said the state budget cuts had left the university no choice but to raise fees, and noted that the system received only half as much, per student, from the state as it did in 1990.
“My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.”
At U.C.L.A. on Wednesday, 14 demonstrators, including 12 students, were arrested for disrupting the Regents meeting. Some demonstrators barricaded themselves inside Campbell Hall, where they spent Wednesday night; others spent the night in tent cities on campus.
Rodrigo Verdugo, 18, a freshman at Cal State San Marcos and the first in his family to go to college, carried a sign that said “no fee hikes.” He said he worried that if his parents, migrant farm workers from Mexico, could not afford state university fees, his younger siblings “might have to work in the fields, too, if this becomes so expensive.”
Standing next to him, Maria Isabel Rocha mentioned ways the budget cuts were already being felt. “The library has cut hours, we can’t print, staff have been furloughed and T.A.s have been cut,” she said, referring to teaching assistants. “So there is less instruction and less office hours, but we’re still responsible for the same amount of material.”
Ms. Rocha, 19, said she already worked two jobs, and higher fees would mean taking on another. “I might have to take a quarter off to make money to afford tuition,” she said.
Isaac Miller and Irene Van, who traveled to U.C.L.A. late Wednesday night in a bus caravan from Berkeley, said they worried about how higher fees would affect illegal immigrant students, who are not eligible for financial aid, and minority students, already dwindling in number since Proposition 209 prohibited affirmative action.
“Diversity is central to this,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s at stake here.”
Mr. Miller and Ms. Van wore shreds of the red armbands adopted at a Sept. 24 walkout, when more than 5,000 students demonstrated outside Sproul Hall at Berkeley.
After Thursday’s vote, as news trickled out to students rallying outside, the chants grew louder and students linked arms to block regents from leaving the building. The police intervened, and as one regent left, about 100 students clustered around him, yelling “Shame on you!”
Mark Yudof, the university president, said the state budget cuts had left the university no choice but to raise fees, and noted that the system received only half as much, per student, from the state as it did in 1990.
“My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.”
At U.C.L.A. on Wednesday, 14 demonstrators, including 12 students, were arrested for disrupting the Regents meeting. Some demonstrators barricaded themselves inside Campbell Hall, where they spent Wednesday night; others spent the night in tent cities on campus.
Rodrigo Verdugo, 18, a freshman at Cal State San Marcos and the first in his family to go to college, carried a sign that said “no fee hikes.” He said he worried that if his parents, migrant farm workers from Mexico, could not afford state university fees, his younger siblings “might have to work in the fields, too, if this becomes so expensive.”
Standing next to him, Maria Isabel Rocha mentioned ways the budget cuts were already being felt. “The library has cut hours, we can’t print, staff have been furloughed and T.A.s have been cut,” she said, referring to teaching assistants. “So there is less instruction and less office hours, but we’re still responsible for the same amount of material.”
Ms. Rocha, 19, said she already worked two jobs, and higher fees would mean taking on another. “I might have to take a quarter off to make money to afford tuition,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/educatio..._r=1&ref=us
)*
