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href="http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2009/12/03/activism">http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2009/12/03/activism</A></H1></DIV>
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<H1
style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 24px !important; FONT-WEIGHT: bold !important">New
Wave of Student Activism</H1>
<DIV style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" class=attribute-coverdate>December 3, 2009</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" class=attribute-coverdate>Inside Higher Ed</DIV>
<DIV style="PADDING-LEFT: 20px" class="span-10 last">
<DIV class=attribute-bodytext>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">WASHINGTON -- Students at California
public universities have been staging protests against budget cuts and fee hikes
all fall, capturing local and national attention with administration building
sit-ins, 24-hour library occupations and large outdoor rallies.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Though they’ve been the loudest this
fall -- and in particular, over the last few weeks, as the University of
California Board of Regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent -- California’s
students aren’t the only ones organizing to protect their financial and
educational interests. As institutions and states take red ink to their budgets
and green ink to their tuition bills, students in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New
York have begun speaking out. Students in Canada, Germany and Austria are also
agitating against tuition hikes.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">“A new era in student activism has …
emerged out of California,” said Victor Sanchez, president of the University of
California Student Association (USCA) and a senior at UC Santa Cruz, at the
start of a panel discussion here Wednesday hosted by the Campus Progress branch
of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “It’s the beginning of a
student movement. It’s a movement against the privatization of our public
institutions here in the United States.”</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Angus Johnston, a historian who
completed his doctorate at the City University of New York earlier this year and
studies American student activism, said he sees “a lot more going on beyond
California than most people recognize.” When students go to a state capitol or
to Congress to lobby for their interests “that’s not something that
makes<I><SPAN class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN></I><I>The New York
Times,</I><SPAN class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN>that’s not something
you get on NPR for doing.” Smaller campus protests, he added, aren’t getting
much coverage beyond campus and local media.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">In California and increasingly
elsewhere, Sanchez said, students don’t want to see their state’s public
colleges and universities turn toward a high tuition, high aid model that looks
less like a public institution than a private one, and there “really is a lot of
anger.” There's anger, too, at private institutions, though students haven’t yet
galvanized as students at publics have needed to during the recession.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">The state of California’s budget -- as
well as the institutional budgets of the UC, California State University and the
state’s community colleges -- “is constantly being balanced on our backs,” he
said, but students are unwilling to see their expenses rise and the actual
dollars going toward their educations fall. The same, he added, could be said
for students at public colleges and universities across the country.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">After several waves of cuts, New York
Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, is proposing additional cuts to higher
education. Governors and legislators in Florida, Michigan, Iowa and a number of
other states have also cut support for public higher education.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">In California’s student activism, one
problem some see is too much focus on attacking high-level administrators. UC
President Mark Yudof, Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau and the system’s
regents<SPAN class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN><A
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; COLOR: rgb(220,81,0); FONT-WEIGHT: 700; TEXT-DECORATION: underline; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial"
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/11/25/california"
target=_blank>have borne the brunt of activists’ anger</A>.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">That, said Bruce Cain, director of the
UC Washington Center and a professor of political science, is a mistake. “I
share your pain. Believe me -- I don’t think it’s fair that you guys have to pay
more. I worry about how that distorts the careers that you guys are going to
pursue…. I think all that has to be changed,” he said. “But you’re not helping
us if you’re only going to complain about Yudof and not look at the broader
picture.”</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Cain’s suggestion to Sanchez and other
student activists: take aim at local and state governments, too. “You guys have
to be part of the broader political context,” he said. “You can’t simply be
focused on the administrators, some of whom, I admit, haven’t made a strong
enough case for public education, haven’t been out there. But you guys have to
take the larger political context seriously because that’s what’s killing us in
the long run.”</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Sanchez defended how UC students have
been protesting. “The targets need to be the UC administration, as well as the
state legislature and the governor, most importantly for us,” he said, arguing
that years of mismanagement have gotten the system to where it is now.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Students, he added, haven’t felt like
they could work with top administrators in getting their interests heard. “Our
relationship has been so fragmented and broken” that it’s difficult for the two
sides to come together in putting pressure on the state government.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Elsewhere, the targets have been more
mixed. At the University of Maryland at College Park, 600 students gathered last
month to protest the elimination of the position of associate provost for equity
and diversity, which President Dan Mote justified as an appropriate cost-cutting
measure. Thirty students at the State University of New York at Geneseo spent
three days camped out on a campus quad, taking aim at Paterson’s proposed
cuts.</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Bob Hayes, a junior at Maryland, said
he and other activists on his campus are looking toward California and New York
as they build their own efforts and plot a path for the spring semester. “I
think there is a growing movement of students fighting against privatization,
fighting against cost increases, and trying to keep the education as high
quality as possible.”</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Johnston, the historian, said he’s
gotten phone calls and e-mail messages from several student journalists working
on stories comparing the situations on their own campuses and in their own
states to California. “That news hook is leading to more media coverage in the
student media and in the larger media,” he said. “It’s going to give us all a
bigger picture of what’s going and what has been going on for years.”</P>
<P style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px !important">Sanchez said he sees what’s happening
as the start of a movement to bring change to public higher education. “This is
definitely the early stages of what we are hoping for is going to be a new fight
for our generation … the fight for an accessible, quality and affordable
university.”</P></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 10px" class=attribute-byline>—<SPAN
class=Apple-converted-space> </SPAN><A
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; COLOR: rgb(220,81,0); FONT-WEIGHT: bold; TEXT-DECORATION: none; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial"
href="mailto:jennifer.epstein@insidehighered.com">Jennifer
Epstein</A></DIV></DIV></DIV></SPAN></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>