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Students protesting rising tuition fill the stairway and walkway at the UC Riverside building where the UC Regents met in January. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / May 16, 2012) |
SAN DIEGO -- While UC regents meet inside the Sacramento Convention Center on Wednesday, students and instructors will be demonstrating outside, continuing their protests of spiraling tuition costs.
"We need a crackdown on UC mismanagement of executive pay, declining in-state enrollment, tuition hikes and police violence toward students," organizers said in a statement.
Representatives of the UC Union Coalition, UC Student Assn. and Council of UC Faculty Assns. planned to address the regents at the start of the meeting Wednesday morning and then hold a rally.
Student activists have staged a string of protests in recent months, clashing with police. In March, three UCLA students were arrested after protesters disrupted a San Francisco regents meeting with a "spring break" demonstration in which some stripped down to bathing suits and tossed inflatable beach balls.
In a November incident that was recorded on video and widely viewed online, UC Davis protesters were squirted with pepper spray by campus police.
Undergraduate costs for California residents, including tuition, room, board and campus fees, has risen to $31,000 and university officials have warned of more increases if voters this fall reject Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax hike.
