SAN FRANCISCO ““ With over 100 University of California
students rallying outside their doors, the UC Board of Regents
decided to lend its all-out support to Gov. Gray Davis’
revised budget proposal to ensure that student fees are not further
increased.
The governor’s budget proposal, known as the May Revise,
does not cut any more funds from the UC system beyond those
proposed in January, Davis announced Tuesday.
However, Larry Hershman, vice president of budget at UCOP,
cautioned that whether or not student fees are raised will
ultimately depend on additional budget cuts proposed by the state
legislature that could amount to as much as $400 million.
“That would be devastating and could lead to a lot of
serious decisions the regents would have to make regarding
fees,” he said. “We want to avoid these kinds of
draconian cuts. We want to make an all-out effort to support the
governor’s budget.”
Currently, UC students pay an average of $4,017 in fees, which
includes the recent midyear increase of $405. With the fee
increases already in place, UC students will be paying around
$5,082, which is a 35 percent increase from pre-spring 2003
numbers.
Opponents of the fee increase claim that given substantial state
budget cuts, students could be paying as much as 70 percent more in
the future, although Hanan Eisenman, a press aide for UCOP,
disputes that figure.
However, Hershman and Regent Ward Connerly said given the
financial hole the UC system is facing, students would either have
to pay greater fees or suffer a decline in the quality of
university services.
“What these student fees are paying for is
instruction,” Hershman said.
Student-regent Dexter Ligot-Gordon said fee increases would be
highly detrimental to student communities.
“Students will drop out, work more, and (be) in more debt,
and to me that’s unconscionable,” he said.
Students from UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine,
UC Riverside, and UC Davis turned out at the meeting to make sure
the regents heard their voices.
They packed the conference room where the regents’ meeting
was held , and the board extended the public comment period to
allow more students to speak. But they continued to disrupt the
meeting even after the period was over, prompting police to declare
the group an “illegal assembly” and threaten to arrest
any students who remained.
Rattling homemade noisemakers and shouting chants, protesters
shouted their grievances through the closed doors of the conference
room and demanded the regents take notice of their plight.
“Maybe when you were undergraduates, you could afford a 70
percent fee increase, but a lot of us can’t,” Eric
Lopez, a third-year history student at UCLA, said to the regents.
“What you could do could destroy the lives of hundreds and
thousands of students who just want an education.”
Francisco Lopez, a first-year psychobiology student at UCLA,
said he works 40 hours a week with four hours of sleep every night
to make ends meet, and a fee increase of 70 percent would force him
to drop out.
Many students regarded the regents as totally unaccountable to
the students and mocked them as “racist” and
“fee-gents.”
“Politicians, they have to appease us with words but
neglect us with actions,” Lopez said.
Protesters asked that the regents have their vote on possible
student fee increases before the end of the school year and hold it
at UCLA, which is more accessible to students.
But several regents, including Ligot-Gordon, Connerly, and
Alfredo Terrazas, called for greater correspondence and
availability between the regents and the student community.
The regents expressed accessibility concerns as well. “To
give legitimacy to the process, we need to be transparent,”
Terrazas said. “They deserve to see our faces when we (raise
fees) and we can educate them as to why we need to do
that.”
To increase transparency and student involvement, Stephen Klass,
chairman of the UC Student’s Association, proposed the
creation of a Student Fee Increase Advisory Committee consisting of
students and UC faculty, advising regents on fee policy.
Klass urged the regents to consider the ramifications of raising
fees, including how student growth reflects on the future of the
state.
“If you raise fees you will not only be inhibiting
students, you will also be inhibiting the state of
California,” he said.
It is not clear when or where the regents will ultimately decide
about student fees, but Regent Judith Hopkinson said their hands
were tied until the final budget is released in June.
Though protesters did not get any guarantees from the regents
regarding student fees, several regents praised the students for
sacrificing their time to be present and promised to consider their
opinions.
“I want you to know that you are all future leaders of
California,” Terrazas said. “That you took time off to
be here to passionately argue that you deserve an education is
something we need to hear.”
With reports from Andrew Edwards, Daily Bruin Staff.