Americans Follow the Money as Students
Protest
from the Creative Youth News Team
November 22, 2009
Today, after days of occupying Kerr Hall and Kresge Town
Hall, Santa Cruz
students vacated that last of the occupied buildings, avoiding arrest.
At Berkeley, 45 were arrested, including 43 students and a biology
professor, after Wheeler Hall was occupied on Friday, November
20. Four were initially charged with felony burglary, but later
all charges were reduced to misdemeanor. Students claimed that
police
and sheriff deputies violently used force, batons, and pepper
spray.
There were also reports of tear gas.
52 students were arrested at Davis following a protest inside Mark Hall.
At UCLA, Campbell Hall was renamed Carter-Higgins Hall in honor
of two Black Panthers shot in 1969 at UCLA. More than a dozen
UCLA students were arrested.
What was the cause: after losing billions in bad investments and
hiring administrators at salaries of half a million dollars or more
apiece and giving
those administrators raises, UC Regents hoped to pay for their bad
choices by laying off teachers and charging students an additional 32%
increase in tuition.
The University of California is considered by prospective college
students to have the worst financial aid for California high school
students of all schools in the nation. Private schools, including
Harvard, are providing so much free financial aid that all but
super-rich students are not being giving a full ride with no
post-college debt.
While private schools are becoming more and more affordable, the
University of California is becoming affordable
only for the very,
very rich. What is wrong with this picture?