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To the various A.S. councilmembers and UCSD alumni allegiantly flooding our editorial inboxes: We hear you. You want the Guardian, like UC Berkeley’s Daily Cal, to officially endorse the systemwide staff and student walkout that took place last week, along with its driving message: that Yudof and the Board of Regents must find a way to balance the UC budget without raising student fees and cutting staff salaries.
Things became a bit less clear amid the shouts and signage of the angry mob last Thursday. Union workers, Cross-Cultural Center representatives, YouTube-hit hopefuls, professors and graduate students from the artier departments, Student Voice! green-shirters ‘mdash; and everybody else who didn’t want to go to class ‘mdash; wove causes across campus, out-shouting each other and passing out protest paraphernalia like it was candy.
We asked a small sect of protestors toting ‘Fees Are Racist’ signs to explain how the cuts related to race; they replied that they didn’t know, and that someone had just handed them the signs. (It’s true: The U.S. capitalist system generally ensures minorities the lowest-paying, least valued positions and a much rougher road to higher education. In this way, furloughs and admission cutbacks will have a graver effect on minority populations ‘mdash; but that’s a massive economic issue that can’t be solved by Yudof alone, especially with anti-affirmative action nazis breathing down his neck.)
Which brings us to the next shoddily markered posterboard to catch our eye: ‘Yudof Hitler: Education Is Not Just for the Elite.’
Hitler? Really? Unemployment can hardly be equated to mass genocide. Even less extreme jabs at the UC president ‘mdash; ‘Lay off Yudof,’ ‘Cut Yudof, Not Education’ ‘mdash; were ignorant to the fact that greater evils in the system exist than one stolid, bald conservative could be solely responsible for. (And lord knows there’ll always be another to replace him.) The only way the masses can change money-minded policy up top is if policymakers feel their security legitimately threatened by a group of unified, reasonable individuals. A pissed-off herd of misinformed rebels without cause or direction isn’t exactly going to have the regents shaking in their boots.
The Guardian editorial board has long vocalized its ‘official’ stance on raising student fees or slashing from academics: It must be the very, very last resort. At this point, we firmly believe that Yudof and the regents have not done everything within their power to avoid the looming 32 percent fee
increase and the crippling blows currently being dealt to course quality/availability. We will need to have seen UC leaders hunger-striking on the White House doorstep and cutting their own salaries and benefits to common-man sleights before it will be acceptable for them to inflate the cost of public (if exceptional, up to now) higher education.
Why did university officials change admission requirements last spring to include those high-school applicants with fewer educational resources if they were just planning on spitting in all those newly eligible faces with a five-figure yearly tuition bill come fall? Yudof has proposed a larger financial-aid pool to accompany the new fees, but the two only cancel each other out to become just as unaffordable as they are now. His Blue and Gold Plan ‘mdash; which covers all student fees for students whose families make less than $60,000 a year ‘mdash; will exclude students whose parents might make a little more, but still can’t afford to send their kid to school at $10,000 a year, especially considering the newly impossible cost of living.
While snaking from Gilman Parking Structure to Geisel Library to the Chancellor’s Complex, Thursday’s mob decided it would be a good idea to bust into Peterson Hall and Center Hall classrooms and push their slogans onto students who had decided to go to class ‘mdash; the majority of whom were likely freshmen, or hadn’t caught word of the first-day-back protest.
To the dramatic disbelief of protestors, students responded to their demands to ‘Walk out!’ with a resounding, ‘Fuck you, get out of here.’ Later, during closing speeches on Library Walk from key players, A.S. Campuswide Senator Bryant Pena expressed his dismay over such disunity within the student body.
But we must remember that not every apathetic Price Center rat will be inclined to jump from his or her seat and join the revolution just because there’s a catchy call-back in his ear and a Che banner in his face. We cannot expect everyone to know (or care) about the proposed tuition hikes without informing them of the basics beforehand. Protestors would have been wise to pass out fliers or invite students to a future teach-in if they expected any sort of progressive response from the clueless thousands.
So, our stance on the walkout: We endorse the concept wholeheartedly, but encourage a far more informative approach. Follow-up walkouts are essential ‘mdash; along with the participation of tax- and tuition-paying parents, who hold the real weapon in the eyes of the suits up top. At this point, UC leaders probably feel it’s a whole lot simpler to rake in more student fees than haggle with the federal government or Schwarzenegger’s posse for emergency funds. But if protests continue to grow in size and we begin to chant in unison, we might have a real chance to rumble the fault lines.