Police officers used batons and pepper spray against a crowd of
UC Santa Cruz student protesters Wednesday afternoon at the UC
Board of Regents meeting on that campus, which resulted in the
arrest of three individuals.
The student protest, with approximately 150 students in
attendance at its peak, escalated when a small number of students
prevented individuals from exiting the building where the regents
meeting was taking place, said Jose Diaz, diversity commissioner of
UCSC’s undergraduate student government, who helped plan and
lead the protest.
Students were there to speak out against the planned
construction of two new residential colleges on the UCSC campus,
which they say would destroy the campus environment, as well as fee
increases and what they see as the administration’s failure
to reach out to ethnic groups, Diaz said.
Two UCSC students and one UCSC alumna were arrested during the
altercation and have been charged with disturbing a public meeting
and resisting arrest, said Jim Burns, a UCSC spokesperson.
One of the students has also been charged with three counts of
battery against a police officer, Burns said.
None of their names have been released.
“Students were arrested and batons and pepper spray were
used in a defensive mode when students confronted the police
officers,” Burns said.
Burns added that no students received injuries serious enough to
warrant hospitalization.
The cases of the three individuals have been forwarded to the
Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, and the two
students may also be subject to action by the Student Judicial
Affairs Office, Burns said.
“Officers are also interested in their own safety, and
when a crowd surges forward in a threatening manner all the people
in the crowd are put at risk, and the officers themselves,”
he said.
The regents met at UCSC during the past two days as part of a
routine campus visit in order to experience firsthand the people,
programs and activities on campus, said Trey Davis, a spokesman for
the University of California Office of the President.
The protest began in front of the student union, followed by a
march through campus to the brand new Humanities Building.
It was originally planned as a non-violent
“speakout” in order to gain the attention of the
regents, since due to the size of the room the meeting was open to
a selected few members of the public, Diaz said.
“We didn’t want (the protest) to get that extreme.
We wanted to open (the meeting) to students so that people who
wanted to say something would have that opportunity,” Diaz
said.
Eric Nguyen, a second-year politics and legal studies student at
UCSC, attended the beginning of the protest and said students were
ineffective because the regents could not hear the protesters
during their meeting. The meeting was held in a soundproof lecture
hall, and as an audience member Nguyen could not hear anything.
“People brought up good points but they were not tactfully
done,” Nguyen said, adding that students yelled profanities
directed at the regents and threw objects at the building.
“The protest reflected poorly on the Santa Cruz population
because it was handled in an immature and unprofessional
way,” Nguyen said.
Paul Ortiz, associate professor of communication studies at
UCSC, helped head a negotiation between students, police and
administrators that brought the protest to an end.
“My concern was that students and regents were safe and
that the riot police were not called in,” Ortiz said.
The regents have come to expect visits to prompt protests by
people, but “that doesn’t grant protestors the right to
break laws and university policies,” Burns said.
Regents meetings are open to public speakers, though only 30
individuals from the Santa Cruz community were scheduled to speak
over the past two days.
Nguyen said only two of the speakers were UCSC students, with a
vast majority from the city of Santa Cruz and neighboring
communities.
This is the first time the regents have convened on the Santa
Cruz campus since 2002.
“Groups make public displays at every regents
visit,” Davis said.
“Freedom of expression is a crucial foundation of the
academic mission of the university and the regents, but at the same
time members of the community must be respectful and engage in
constructive and positive communication.”