By Matt Krupnick Bay Area News Group September 21, 2009
BERKELEY - Financial problems are causing more angst than ever at the University of California, where some faculty members have pledged to walk out of class on Thursday to protest budget cuts and students are trying to figure out how to band together to fight tuition and fee increases.
The expected showdown this week - on the first day of classes at eight of the 10 campuses - follows a raucous UC Board of Regents meeting last week where officials presented their tuition plan and 14 of about 100 demonstrators were arrested.
"It's going to explode pretty soon, if it hasn't already," said Will Smelko, a senior political science major at UC-Berkeley and the student-body president.
The growing rumbles come after a rough year for the university, which has cut enrollment and raised student fees to make up for state budget cuts. In November, the Board of Regents is expected to vote to increase tuition by 32 percent over the next year, pushing it to more than $10,000 annually.
Similar actions have roiled the 23-campus California State University system, where faculty leaders have scheduled a mock funeral for public higher education at this week's Board of Trustees meeting.
In July, the state Legislature slashed nearly $3 billion from California's 110 community colleges, the 23-campus California State University and the 10-campus UC system. In response, the UC system raised student fees by 9 percent and made about $300 million in cuts, but warned more cuts are likely when federal stimulus money runs out.
Days before the scheduled UC walkout, students, educators and administrators remain unclear how the event will shake out. Some professors plan to teach as usual, while others will hold teach-ins to educate students about California higher education.
Faculty leaders said they are neutral.
"We regard it as a matter of individual conscience," said Christopher Kutz, chairman of UC-Berkeley's Academic Senate.
He and others have tried to direct the rising tide of anger to the right places. Legislators are the people the university needs to persuade, he said, not the UC leaders in UC's administrative office in Oakland.
"I think some of the anger directed at Oakland is misdirected," Kutz said. "At the same time, I do feel that University of California leadership needs to do a much better job making its case to the state."
Finding a clear, unified voice has been a problem of late at UC. All the groups talk about a "movement," but each seems to have different goals in mind.
Each group is beset with its own, unique problems. About 2,000 staff members are being laid off, professors are taking unpaid days off and students are being forced to pay significantly more.
Undergraduate and graduate students have been affected differently. Staff cuts, for example, have slowed reimbursements to graduate students who pay some of their own expenses upfront, said Miguel Daal, a doctoral student of physics at UC Berkeley and president of the campus Graduate Assembly.
"That's important for a student who has to shell out a month's rent for a research trip," he said.
With such a wide range of problems, unity is the only way to get results, Smelko said. The movement needs to start with students at UC, Cal State and the community colleges, he said, and it needs to start quickly.
"The students need to realize that we are our only advocates," he said. "And we need to make sure we're not being dragged in as anyone else's lackey.
"We need to take drastic measures."
Some expect those measures to happen soon.
"At some point, both students and the general population need to ask themselves, 'When is enough going to be enough?' " said Victor Sanchez, a UC-Santa Cruz senior who serves as president of the UC Student Association. "I think we're reaching that point."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
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