UC Santa Cruz Protest: From a Face-Off to a Mace-Off
Annum Khan | Nov 02, 2009 | Comments 10
The recent University of California budget cuts have not only imposed financial hardships, but are also pushing students to protest. At UC Irvine, the dead rose to stand up to UC President Mark Yudof. Several meetings were held and petitions were signed. At UC Santa Cruz on Oct. 16, students took the student protest into their own hands.
The protest group, known as Occupy California, practiced sit-ins and rallies in Santa Cruz and surrounding areas.
Even now, controversy surrounds the protest because of the police reaction – spraying some of the participating students with mace.
According to some UCSC students, the group of students who were protesting are not necessarily liked by everyone on campus.
UCSC third-year student Denise Doria said, “They pretty much do extreme things on campus … everyone gets annoyed, it really doesn’t make a difference in my opinion.”
Occupy California’s purpose for this rally in particular was to express their distaste for the UC’s unfair distribution of finances. In a document sent to various media sources, Occupy California voiced the specific problems with UC.
“We have recently learned that the University of California does not use tuition money or student fees to fund research and education,” Occupy California representatives said in a document, calling students to revolt.
Occupy California claimed that UC places all of the money into an account with the Bank of New York Mellon Trust to guard borrowing power in credit markets.
“They hold our tuition as collateral in order to finance the largest and most speculative construction projects in the state of California,” the Occupy California document said. “UC pledged collateral rose by 60 percent with the last issue of bonds to $6.72 billion from $4.2 billion. The number of students taking out debt has risen 20 percent since 2000 and from 80 to 100 percent for students of color.”
The document also cited the fact that the average debt levels for graduating seniors rose to $23,200 in 2008 alone, a 24 percent increase over 2004.
According to Executive Vice Chancellor Dave Kliger of Campus Provost at UCSC, “A handful of people barricaded themselves in the Humanities II Building for several hours last night. This followed a party in the Social Sciences and Humanities courtyard, which elicited numerous noise complaints from students in nearby college residences,” Kliger said.
There was also controversy over the breakup of the vandalism by the police. According to Occupy California, “All the police said to the students was, ‘Hey folks, let’s go, this is vandalism,’ after which they sprayed mace on them. At no point did the police warn the students that they were about to be sprayed, nor did they ever instruct the students to desist. The police failed to read students their Miranda rights at the time of cuffing but were dragged away to the police vehicle,” representatives from Occupy California said.
But Kliger defended the police, explaining that the group was not as innocent as Occupy California claimed it was.
According to Kliger some protestors got out of hand.
“Three people carrying a large table near the entrance to the Humanities Building – apparently intending to vandalize or blockade the building – cursed at an officer and defied multiple requests to stop. Pepper spray was used to subdue them. One of the three was arrested; the others fled on foot,” Kliger said.
In addition to having the “intention” of vandalizing the building, actual damage was done, requiring cleanup.
In his statement, Kliger said that cleanup costs will hit students and tax payers hard.
“When added to cleanup costs following the earlier occupation of the Graduate Student Commons, these efforts will run into tens of thousands of dollars — costs directly borne by taxpayers, students and their families. Those dollars are diverted from educating and supporting students,” Kliger said.
But Occupy California retaliated, “It is hard to fathom that this cleanup should cost tens of thousands of dollars.” If true, they only indicate the corporate structure of the university and its reliance on inflated costs for services, costs that are indeed “placed on students and workers.”
The fight at UCSC goes on, and as problems continue, the truth begins to surface; what this means for UC students are increased expenses.
While the conflict started out with the increasing cost of tuition due to the budget crisis, if more instances like this one at UCSC start occurring, students may also end up paying for the vandalism caused by the violent protests.
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Eric I have no idea what your point is. Mine is that California is only asking us to take on our fair share of the burden in tough economic times. Vandalizing campus and behaving like ungrateful children isn’t going to improve anyone’s quality of life. There’s nothing un-American about sucking it up, getting through tough times, and continuing to pursue happiness. If anything is offensive, its your comparison of the levity of an unbalanced budget to the that of the civil rights movement.
“Because the traditional Leninist and Liberal approaches to social change aren’t working.”
And that was a very revealing comment on your part, John.
The Randist and Conservative approaches have failed us utterly.
The very connection you make of liberalism and Lenin is very telling, very telling indeed.
Perhaps you want to connect Obama and Hitler next.
Some people make me want to puke.
Some people are just plain more interested in smearing everyone they don’t agree with than they are in anything else.
“Get on with life, stop disturbing the peace on campus, and accept that everyone is going to hurt a little during tough economic times.”
You would say different if you were getting lied about and misrepresented in the media along with treated as less than other civil protestors as always happens when people speak about creating equality and fairness in this world of injustice and pride.
I find your statement both offensive and outright un-American.
Would you tell people in the Civil Rights Movement to “stop disturbing the peace” and “get on with life.”
It’s always good to know someone will stand up for injustice and silencing the public with tyranny and unjust threats of imprisonment and violence.
Shame on UCSC.
Shame on SCPD.
Anyone defending these groups in the aftermath of this are nothing less than uninformed or pandering to the insanity that says that all left-protest is to be silenced while the unpatriotic tea-baggers don’t get their protest broken up with riot gear.
The community is pissed, this was nothing less than supression of facts by the newspapers, UCSC and goes right up to everyday people who insist on making this all about a small number of mainly non-UCSC students who did property damage that the real protestors tried to clean up but were told they would be arrested if they tried to.
You doubt that I would? My husband is taking a break from his BS because we can’t afford to pay for it right now, and my father in law got laid off from his job. Life isn’t fair by any stretch John. It’s especially tough right now, but guess what, you pick up the pieces, make do with what you have left, and get on with your life. Gotta say, the vandalism didn’t make my misfortunes go away.
Laura, I’d like to see you give your “get on with life” advice to someone forced out of school after this quarter because of the increasing cost, or to the workers being laid off.
John, I’m not sure why you think you’re anonymous. You have a distinct style and opinion and write lots of articles for the New University which are published with your full name and department affiliation. I find it funny that you call it stalking, it’s just research that took less than five minutes. It certainly does not qualify as stalking if you have put the information on the internet and I can find it from the comfort of my couch before I finish breakfast.
From your opinions and preaching it’s not ‘safe to assume’ that you have a car or cell phone. I don’t have a car and know plenty of other eco-conscious individuals who don’t. If you’re going to admonish people for not doing enough, you should be living up to what you say is enough.
As for what I propose we do about the budget cuts? Get on with life, stop disturbing the peace on campus, and accept that everyone is going to hurt a little during tough economic times.
Laura, I’m not sure how you’re inferring all of that based on a relatively anonymous comment. And really, just by my first name (or even if you had access to my facebook page) you wouldn’t know if I had a cell phone or car, though this is pretty safe to assume given our culture.
By the way, graffiti does not cause extra work for workers, instead bosses choose to assign extra work to them. And if not occupations, what exactly do you propose? Because the traditional Leninist and Liberal approaches to social change aren’t working.
Since you clearly have access to information such as my email that isn’t public (I assume you’re either New U staff or a stalker) why don’t you contact me so we can chat in person about your proposed tactics for solving the budget crisis?
These accusations clearly are dangerous to the student-worker movement. It is clear that University administrators are trying to divide students, turning students against each other. So, by making a really absurd accusation (‘student occupations cost the University more money’), administrators are not only dividing the students, but also enforcing the b.s. lie that student occupations are detrimental to the university. Perhaps there wouldn’t be any need for students to occupy their own university buildings if Yudof didn’t steal nearly $800,000 annually. Perhaps, if the University didn’t pledge student tuition for construction projects (http://www.cucfa.org/news/2009_oct11.php), and instead used that money to fund education, there wouldn’t be any occupations. The reality is that students and workers are suffering because of these administrators. It is time for students to take back their university because it belongs to us.
John, you are so full of crap. No these protests do not effect change, but they do cause a mess and extra work for the underpaid laborers you are always harping on about. Of course the administration doesn’t want you to disturb the peace on campus for your own self indulgent purposes. You write articles about not using cell phones, encouraging dumpster diving, and denouncing simple efforts to be green as ‘not good enough’. I’d give you some credit if a simple facebook search didn’t make it clear that you have a cell phone which you use, drive a car to go dumpster diving, and in general don’t practice what you preach.
When you look beyond the administration’s lies and distortions, the real cleanup cost was only about $200.
And I just love the comments that these sorts of actions aren’t effective. As if anything else people have been doing are. Yudof sent out a letter proclaiming the tuition hikes to be matter of fact, as if the Walkouts had never happened. And the Legislature could really care less about sign-waving and circle-marching. But when students are taking over buildings, the university is forced to act in some way. Just look at the library actions, study-ins at CSU Fullerton and UC Berkeley resulted in longer library hours, and even the extension of library hours here at UCI. You can judge the effectiveness of actions very little in the opinions of people on the street, but a whole lot in the responses of administration: in this case macing several students, arresting Brian Glasscock, sending disciplinary letters to several students (many of whom were student journalists merely covering the action, but were ID’ed by police after they asked police tough questions, and are now being accused of organizing both occupations), and finally admin sending out emails to the entire student body denouncing the occupations. Would they really feel the need to denounce an event that wasn’t effective or threatening? Articles like these do nothing to encourage agency, and instead reinforce the notion that we have to play nice and work with legislators and officials who would like nothing better than to kick us out on the street.