Education Should Be Free – November 20, 2014
The University of California was once a tuition-free and public institution. Now the
students are facing yet another tuition hike. The most recent attempt to raise tuition in
2009 was successfully frozen by the courageous and necessary action of students, yet
this week, the UC Regents have approved a 5% tuition increase each year for the next
five years. This is in addition to the numerous increases that have occurred since the
new millennium which amount to what will now be a 500% increase by 2020.
Governors and legislatures have come and gone, and have continually spouted rhetoric
without taking any action.
In addition to tuition increases, students face larger class sizes, fewer classes, cuts to
student services, and ultimately, are paying more for less education. Of course, these
measures disproportionately affects those already marginalized—women, students of
color, queer students, and many more. A private business parades in the mask of a
public university.
All of these issues and more are a direct result of the failed leadership of the UC
Regents, a ruling junta appointed by the governor—yet rebuked in this move even by
Privatization threatens the promise of education for all. With this most recent tuition
hike, UC students are being crushed; this is just one symptom of a global effort to
privatize everything. Our water, lands and studies are being held hostage to further
benefit those at the top of a horrifying capitalist economy of accumulation. It extends far
beyond the university, from the extraction of natural resources, to the oppression and
exploitation of laborers. We are saddled with obligations to work and incur debts at the
expense of our humanity and the habitat we depend on. As students, our future labor is
put on lien for the privilege of attending a once free, now mediocre, university.
The hypocrisy we face is astounding: the Regents gave 20% raises to a few campus
Chancellors just weeks before hoisting more debt onto vulnerable students. Regent
Bonnie Ress said they were correcting an “injustice” by bumping people up from
$360,000 to $383,000. This would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. Never mind
that the chancellors are already in the top half percent of income earners in the United
States. But with ten CEOs, four corporate lawyers, two investment bankers and merely
one student on the board of Regents, it is not surprising that the priorities of this
institution are skewed towards the interests of those at the top.
For all these reasons, we are occupying the Humanities 2 building at UC Santa Cruz. We
are using the space to do many things: to think, to strategize, to finally meet the fellow
students we sit next to every day. Most of all, however, we are simply inhabiting a space
that is ours in a world where nothing seems to be for us.
The students here are fed up, but we have not given up hope on one another, and we
have not given up hope on you. This message is intended for our fellow students here at
UCSC, but it is also for everyone else: we want to hear from alumni; from parents; from
the people in our communities; from our fellow students at other UCs; from our young
comrades in elementary, middle and high schools; from the workers and teachers who
make this university run. We may only be in this building temporarily, but we want to
build something bigger, something lasting, and we want all of you to be a part of it.
The Regents have passed their tuition hike, but this is far from over. We are calling on
our allies to help us grow: more occupations will surely follow (we don’t know who plans
them!), and more strikes, more disrupted meetings, more barricades, more students and
allies in the street. All of this not to return to the past, but to build a new future.
We will be unmanageable until such time as there are no managers—until the Regents,
tuition, and privatization are washed away in a wave of democracy.
Autonomous Students 