Photo by Toby Silverman.

What is it like to be only a citizen of the earth? Nineteen-year-old Lauren Dike can tell you. Dike, a self-proclaimed Californian, lived in the state for 17 years, but when she and her mother packed up and moved to Washington the summer before her senior year, her Californian classification was stripped from her. And here is the catch: Dike is not a resident of Washington, either.

“The state of California isn’t recognizing me, the state of Washington doesn’t recognize me — really I’m just a citizen of this earth right now,” Dike said.

After graduating from high school and receiving a diploma in Washington, Dike returned to California to attend UC Santa Cruz and was charged out-of-state tuition. Dike said that at the beginning of her freshman year at UCSC, she was told by the financial aid office that after living here one year, she would be considered a resident and charged in-state tuition. But the year came and went, fall quarter of 2011 rapidly approached and Dike was still not recognized as a California resident.

Being the daughter of a disabled vet and single mother, fronting the cost of out-of-state tuition was not an option. So Dike and her mother did what they could and appealed: first at the UCSC level, where it was denied, then at the UC Office of the President — straight to the top. At the UC level, the appeal was yet again denied and the case was closed for fall, forcing Dike to take a leave of absence.

“I’m 19 years old and not in school. I’m on a leave of absence and working two jobs,” Dike said. “It has been the most upsetting thing. I keep getting my hopes up and thinking I can go back to school, and then they tell me no.”

Among the litany of reasons for Dike’s frustration is the fact that she and her mother have both paid into the very system that is denying her access.

“I think I more than deserve to be part of the University of California system,” Dike said. “I am a byproduct of the California public education system. My taxpayer dollars have been helping other kids go to college and now they are not even helping me go.”

For Dike, a university education and the subsequent denial of that education carries that much more weight.

“All I have ever wanted to do is go to school,” Dike said. “I’m the first person in my family to go to college. Knowledge shouldn’t be costing this much money. It really hurts.”

Despite the disappointment and let down, Dike is maintaining a positive attitude, and with her mother alongside her, is continuing to fight. Currently no legal action has been taken against the UC, but Dike and her mother have been in contact with lawyers as far away as Washington, D.C. and expect this case will end up in court.

“We have done everything that we can do,” Dike said. “This is bigger than me and bigger than my mom. [We have] no choice but to have some big-league lawyer help us out.”

Dike said her fight for her education has inspired her to think of the big picture and her place in it.

“[The fight for education] is not just affecting me — it’s affecting all of us,” Dike said. “So many people do not have the opportunity to fight for their education, and I have this amazing opportunity to fight for mine.”

Dike hopes to pursue universal education in her post-collegiate career.

Dike remains positive about her situation and sees her particular struggle as exemplary of America’s main credo.

“If you want something bad enough you can go out there and get it,” Dike said, but added, with a nervous laugh, “I mean, that’s if it works out. If it doesn’t, I will be more than heartbroken — but I am being an optimist.”

Though Dike maintains her love for UCSC in particular, her opinion of the UC has not retained its initial luster.

“I started losing respect for the UC system as I watched my friends drop out because they couldn’t afford it,” Dike said. “I love UCSC itself, but the system it’s a part of … it’s disgusting. I’m not a name, I’m a Washington diploma.”

This, Dike said, does not bode well for her particular situation.

“When you’re broke and you can get more money out of someone,” Dike asked, “Why would you cut them a break?”

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

The recent UC Board of Regents planning session in San Francisco left many unsure about the UC system’s financial strategy for the next several years.

The regents met on Sept. 15 to discuss and plan a stable financial framework for the embattled UC system. Discussion of UC President Mark Yudof’s proposal to mandate an 8–16 percent tuition increase every year for the next four years was notably avoided. The regular increases were proposed in an effort to reduce the $1.5 billion budget gap faced by the UC system.

SFGate coverage painted the regents as largely opposed to Yudof’s proposal, with an increased focus on seeking sources of corporate donorship and philanthropy taking the bulk of the discussion period.

“Get real — and don’t fool yourselves and think the legislature will turn around, or you’ll be waiting for Godot,” Regent David Crane said, voicing the popular sentiment that state aid is unlikely to be forthcoming in any appreciable amount.

Many UC students are left wondering about the regents’ eventual plans.

“Historically, the regents have always supported what Yudof proposes,” said SUA external vice chair Nelson Cortez. “However, it seemed that this proposal was not going to be taken lightly by the regents.”

Cortez is wary of the regents’ focus on seeking more private sector funding.

“While I think it is good the regents are finally looking at alternate forms of revenue and finally doing something to address the lack of funding from Sacramento, I think we need to take a closer, critical look at what exactly they intend to do,” Cortez said. “Privatization of the university is not acceptable and won’t be tolerated by students. This is why students must be involved with the process and this is why the regents must be transparent with their actions.”

Steve Montiel, media relations director of the UC Office of the President, said though nothing was presented for a vote at the planning session, “[the planning session] was very distressing. It’s getting close to budgeting time and the ideal would be to have longer-term commitments from the state, rather than year-to-year.”

Ultimately, state aid is what is needed to close the budget gap, he said.

“What we’re looking to do is get some sort of signal from the regents on a multi-year plan so we can talk to the state about it,” Montiel said.

This signal, he said, would be the four-year tuition increase or something similarly preemptive.

“Some regents talked about corporate fundraising — we’ll do that with the regents and continue to look at alternatives, but when all is said and done, there’s that $1.5 billion gap,” Montiel said.

Seeking private sources of funding is nothing new to the UC system, despite it being a public university.

“$1.3 billion is given in gifts to the UC system every year, but they’re usually campus-specific and restricted,” Montiel said. “Only about 2 percent of gifts to the UC system are unrestricted.”

Still, some regents feel waiting for the state to come to their aid is pointless.

“[We should approach those] who can actually write a check — Chevron, Apple, Cisco and Google — all these companies sitting on money they don’t know what to do with,” said Regent Richard Blum at the Sept. 15 meeting.

Regardless of what method is chosen, Montiel makes it clear there is an interest in making the difficulties of paying for a UC education more predictable for families.

“The purpose [of the meeting] was to enable us to talk with the state about longer term commitments,” he said, “and to enable students to plan with their families with more certainty.”

The UC Board of Regents voted today to approve a 9.6 percent increase in systemwide fees, bringing  annual undergraduate tuition to $11,220. This increase follows the 8 percent fee hike passed by the board in November, and is the second such increase in less than a year.

The UC Board of Regents convening at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay Conference Center. The Board raised tuition by 9.6% in Thursday's vote, bringing it to roughly double the amount in fall 2005. Photo by Prescott Watson.

The fee hike will affect undergraduate and graduate students, beginning fall 2011.

Raised tuition comes in response to the $650 million state cut funding for UC last month, reducing total state support for the university by more than $880 million, and leaving the UC with a $1 billion budget shortfall, according to Nathan Brostrom, the UC system’s executive vice president for business operations.

The board voted 14-4 for the increase. Regents Eddie Island, Student Regent Alfredo Mireles Jr., George Marcus and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom were opposed. Newsom urged the regents to send a message to lawmakers by refusing to raise tuition.

Claudia Magaña, a UCSC third-year and president of the UC Students Association, addresses the Board of Regents on Wednesday. In her address she urged the regents to absorb the state budget cuts through means other than tuition increases. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Regent Bonnie Reiss said she would vote for the hike “with sadness and disgust.”

Some members of the UC community publicly opposed the proposal in the days before the vote. In a July 11 press release from the University of California Student Association (UCSA), Claudia Magaña, UCSA president and UC Santa Cruz third-year, said the regents and the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) should “make every effort to absorb the additional $150 million cut,” rather than placing further financial burden on students.

“Students reject the approach taken by the UC Regents, which has presented an increase to student fees as the only available option to address the entire additional cut from the state …. The regents cannot simply pass this burden onto students and their families through endless fee increases,” Magaña said in the release.

The UCSA strongly opposed the increase, which they said in the press release “will have a devastating impact on access and affordability.”

A portion of the revenue from the increased tuition will go to the UC’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. The plan covers tuition for students from families with annual incomes of $80,000 or less who qualify for federal, state or UC financial aid. For students from financial aid-eligible families with annual incomes up to $120,000, the tuition increase will be waived for the 2011-12 year.

One-third of revenue from tuition increases will go to financial aid, according to a July 13 release from UCOP.

University of California President Mark Yudof was not in attendance at the July 14 meeting of the Board of Regents.

The family of DJ Bott, first-year from Porter, has chosen to forgo paying rent in favor of paying tuition. Photo by Morgan Grana.

DJ Bott isn’t going to let a lack of money stop her from following her dream, but says it would be nice if the California educational system didn’t hamper her every move. An out-of-state student from Miami, Fla., Bott is struggling to cope with the UC’s dire financial situation.

“My parents do struggle with tuition — they always put me first. They’re really selfless, which stresses me out, especially since I can’t get a job,” Bott said. “My mom doesn’t work, and my dad works but doesn’t always get paid on time. He sometimes pays my tuition instead of the rent for that month, and so I feel really bad. There’s a lot of stress on us as a family.”

Bott is one of many first-years coping with the student fee increases implemented by the University of California over the past year. A mid-year increase of $585 in 2010 and an increase of $1,334 for the 2010-2011 academic school year has brought the overall average cost of attendance to $53,580 for out-of-state students.

On the surface, Bott, a 19-year-old Porter College first-year, keeps her composure. Like any other first-year, she has her share of financial worries, but those worries are compounded by her out-of-state status.

“I didn’t really expect [these difficulties]. I thought I would get more loans, and I’ve applied for a ton of work study jobs,” Bott said. “Nobody takes me because I have no experience. It’d be nice if they gave me the experience here.”

In an effort to lighten the burden on her family, Bott is applying for California residency status. However, the process is long and Bott has a long way to go.

“I just got my new [driver’s] license,” Bott said. “I have to have it for a year to qualify.”

Regardless of the difficulties, Bott is determined to stay.

“My brother went to school at USC a decade ago, and I’ve been visiting him every summer,” Bott said. “I fell in love with California, and it’s always been my goal to come out here for college.”

Though her will is strong, Bott is troubled by her situation at home, and is worried that the price of a UC education is weighing heavily on her family. With this on her mind, Bott has plans to help out her family with tuition come next fall.

“I’m going home for the summer and getting a summer job at my old high school as a counsellor for writing camp, so hopefully I can set aside money to help pay for tuition,” Bott said.

Bott isn’t going to admit defeat in the face of UCSC’s financial fluctuations, but she has her own opinions about what out-of-state students should expect.

“I’m going to stay here … [out-of-state students] have to be prepared mentally for this, otherwise you’re probably going to want to move back home,” Bott said. “If you know what you want to do, you have to go for it.”

Know what you want: that’s something that Bott has a firm grip on.

“I don’t really need anything else in this life,” Bott said, “except to get an education.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Double tuition.”

This looming threat, though a speculative comment made by Gov. Jerry Brown in a speech last week, becomes more and more of a potential reality for UC students and Californians with each day that passes and an all-cuts budget remains the likely option for Brown to sign off on.

Brown just traveled to Riverside to rally Californians into pressuring four state legislature Republicans to allow tax extensions to be on a June ballot, and thus allow Californians to vote on the matter. If the extensions do not make it on the ballot, or if Californians do not vote for them, the extensions will expire and the UC will likely face a $1 billion cut to its operating budget.

Such a cut, Brown speculated, would mean that students in the UC may see a twofold rise in their tuition. Brown also mentioned campus closures as a potential way of coping, if the tax extensions are not enacted.

The behavior of the Republicans in the legislature is abhorrent. They are not doing their job, which is to let the people of California vote.

The fact that doubled tuition is even a possibility for the UC system is absurd. Such a move would have devastating impacts. It is understandable that cuts need to be made to every facet of the state — and as hard as it is to face, even to the UC system — but to make this kind of cut would be detrimental and extremely shortsighted. Cutting $1 billion from the UC would not be just a cut. It would be the elimination of the public institution.

For students in the UC system and families supporting their children in the system, this would not be an issue of needing to save more, work more or taking out more loans — it would force many students to drop out. If enacted, students in the UC system would be trapped into paying private school tuition, despite the fact that they enrolled at a public institution.

Brown’s statement that closing some campuses would be another possible solution is also shortsighted, for a number of reasons. Closing down any UC campus would make entrance into the UC system that much more difficult, flooding more students into state universities and community colleges — schools that are also receiving immense cuts. This would not be a solution to anything.­­­ It would be deflection, moving the problem to another part of the state’s budget.

Furthermore, any closure of a UC campus would mean thousands of employees without jobs. A closure to universities of that size would overwhelm the state with more unemployment.

Either move — closure of some UC campuses or doubling tuition — violates the objectives that this beautiful system was founded on: affordability, accessibility and the advancement of knowledge. While each of these facets of the UC have been jeopardized in the past few years as dramatic raises in student fees and tuition, increases in class sizes, and the reduction in number of teaching assistants have been implemented, these two moves would be a complete affront to the more than century-old system.

There has been a disillusionment with placing blame for the absurd climbs in student fees, for the forced furloughs, for the laying off of numerous employees, for the increased class sizes and the decreased accessibility, but blaming will not be a means for saving the UC. We all need to rally the state into providing more funding for higher education and to push the Republicans to let Californians vote. After all, it is our system.

We cannot keep blaming just Yudof, UCOP and the chancellors and looking within the UC for a solution — the fact remains that the state has all but stopped investing in higher education. The solution cannot be found in parading to chancellors’ and vice chancellors’ homes and blaming just the higher-ups in the UC system. The solution must be found in all of us: in our parents, our neighbors, our family friends, in Californians. The disillusionment must end. Everyone contributes to this system, and if we want to save it, we all must take part in that. We must join forces rather than splinter.

If this system is going to be saved, all Californians need to rekindle their sense of ownership and pride for the system that once had international prestige — the UC is all of ours, and Californians need to remember that.

Like one editor’s grandmother said to her husband when she first saw the library at UCSC, “This is ours, we support this, and can you believe that?”

That is the attitude that will save the UC.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

Amanda Buchanan, chair of the Student Fee Advisory Committee, started asking questions when she was told that a 2 percent tax would be included in the ballot language for new campus based fees. The tax would pay for operations of the University Office of the President (UCOP).

“I knew better,” said Buchanan, a third-year who is also a member the Student Union Assembly (SUA), UCSC’s student government.

Campus-based fees are initiated and approved by students to fund services and organizations like student government, student media and child care. Since the budget crisis has resulted in deep cuts, students have become more dependent on these self-assessed taxes to fund necessary services. Last spring students passed Measure 42, a $6.50 per student per quarter fee to support increased library hours.

In search of answers, Buchanan spoke with Free Moini, the assistant director of UC Santa Cruz Planning and Budget.

She was told that UCSC administrators want to implement the 2 percent tax as a means of offsetting the cost of a proposal by UCOP which would restructure funding streams system-wide.

Currently, revenue brought in from tuition, state funding and other sources is centralized by UCOP. A portion of these funds is distributed to each campus based on formulas determining the campus’s needs. Under this model, some campuses have more than 100 percent return on their fees, while other campuses receive less.

The funding stream proposal would allow each campus to keep the revenue it generates. However, UCOP would then assess a yet to be determined percentage of each campus’s overall budget.

With the new proposal, the percentage UCOP collects would be used “for central operations, including UCOP administration, UCOP-managed academic programs, systemwide initiatives and ongoing commitments, multi-campus research programs and institutes, and the non‐campus operations of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.”

After the SUA and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway met, campus administration chose not to implement the 2 percent tax on campus-based fees to address this year’s UCOP assessment.

“The proposal itself for the overall system that is being suggested is good,” Buchanan said. “It’s more transparent. But there are holes that need to be fixed. There is no cap on the tax, there’s no discussion on when the tax can increase or when it can decrease.”

The amount that UCOP assesses is not a fixed number and may change based on overall expenditures of each campus, according to the proposal.

Moini, who helps implement budget decisions, said that although there is nothing that keeps the assessment from going up, administration on each campus will pressure UCOP to keep the amount as low as possible.

“We all understand there is a common good with UCOP and they provide services that are valuable,” Moini said. “But we’re not on autopilot where the assessment just keeps getting bigger and bigger. There is an actual review and some level of evaluation.”

The assessment rate will be reviewed every few years, according to the proposal. However, it is not clear who will be a part of that review.

Moini said that taxing campus-based fees to pay the UCOP assessment needs to be considered further and will come up for discussion again next year.

“If our assessment goes up, we are going to have to find the money someplace,” Moini said. “Should the money come from the source that caused the assessment to go up? Or should it come from another source?”

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

As a student, you pay tuition. As a faculty or staff member, you receive a salary. All checks come from and go to the University of California Regents — but beyond that, you don’t know how the UC handles its finances. Because of a lack of transparency, you have no idea.

Last May, $6,000 of UC finances went to Scott H. Newby, private investigator. Disregarding the First Amendment right of the students to assemble peacefully, UC Santa Cruz paid Newby to photograph and film students participating at a teach-out last spring, arming itself with the documentation to launch criminal investigations against anyone the university could prove attended the event, should it so choose.

And the administration didn’t tell anyone.

In the face of devastating budget cuts coming from every direction, the university has continued to promise both transparency and fiscal responsibility. It has delivered neither.

Public records requests theoretically afford anyone literate an insight into the decisions and transactions that make the UC tick. But there’s a caveat: Anyone requesting information has to know exactly what he or she is looking for.

Case in point: Tom Pazo — the student who requested the invoice detailing Newby’s 24-hour contract with UCSC — was able to acquire the invoice because he approached Newby at the May 18 and 19 teach-out and documented the name of the private investigator (who was hired as a “photographer/videographer” if you ask Jim Burns Often).

And $6,000 is not just another drop in the bucket. At first glance — compared to the tens of thousands of dollars students dish out every year to pay for tuition, books, food, the exorbitant cost of living in Santa Cruz… and the hundreds of millions of dollars California faces in debt — it’s easy to say $6,000 doesn’t matter. But with $6,000, UCSC could have paid one lecturer’s salary for a quarter. A large lecture could have been afforded one more teaching assistant. Two quarters of tuition can be purchased at the price of $6,000.

The implications are not limited to academics. Students who might otherwise choose to exercise their rights to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble may be quieted by the threat of photographic documentation of activity that could be misconstrued as illicit.

Students’ right to access this information has been violated by the university, which delayed releasing requested documents for seven months in this case, and more than a year in others.

The administration claims that it acted with the interests of the students at heart. It reports compliance with records requests. The information director has even maintained that the university supports students in their endeavors to demonstrate against rising fees and growing class sizes.

In reality, UCSC administrators’ clandestine transactions convey an ugly truth: students’ right to assemble without fear of reprimand is in jeopardy, and too often public information is too difficult to make public.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Free education rain or shine” is written on the sidewalk every 100 feet, and flyers on every other light post for a noon rally draw attention to events planned for the first Tuesday and Wednesday of March.

The demonstrations on these two days are meant to spread awareness about the ongoing UC budget cuts. Organizers point to the UC regents for the state’s failure to fund higher education.

In fall 2009, UC regents voted to increase UC registration fees by 32 percent. A year later, in 2010, the regents increased fees another 8 percent.

Coincidently, many divisions continue to face cuts to their departments. At UCSC, the American studies and the community studies majors have been suspended until further notice.

Brian Malone, campus chair for the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) and a fifth-year graduate literature student, has been organizing to inform the campus about these cuts.

“The pressure to privatize the UC is coming from the failure of state funding,” Malone said, “but the way UC has spent the money has sort of shifted the burden onto students.”

Open University Together (OUT), an unofficial student group, is organizing a demonstration for March 1. The group has been organizing since the start of the semester to make March 1 a peaceful, fun and informative demonstration.

The excitement for March 1 comes from the goal to get at least 1,000 students on the East Field at noon, where they will spell out “Free Education” with their bodies.

Second-year environmental studies and art major Noah Miska was one of the students who came up with this idea and has been scrambling to make the event happen.

The group has accumulated $1,300 in grants from various colleges, which will pay for food, art supplies and facilities for the event.

Student participants will be invited to make use of the 11 gallons of paint, several hundred pieces of chalk, 256 markers, 1,000 feet of butcher paper and several hundred pieces of cardboard provided by OUT to construct posters, artwork and idea boards to express their ideas and opinions about the state of the UC.

After students finish spelling “Free Education,” they will form discussion groups, teachings and an open space to meet others. For Miska, the event will show that activism can be both fun and productive.

“I want to use the event as a networking space for future organizers of non-violent demonstrations,” Miska said.

For Miska, free education starts with spreading awareness.

“I want students to engage in knowing that no one should have to pay for access to resources on campus,” Miska said. “Anyone who wants to learn about something has a right to be connected to someone who is able and willing to teach on that subject.”

Even though the cuts come from the state, part of the problem is that certain “corporations are not being taxed to the extent that they could be,” Miska said. He commented on the administration’s idea that cuts are inevitable, and wants to make this a focal point at the March 1 demonstration.

“I just want to remind people of the ideal on which the university was founded, which our administration seems to have lost sight of,” Miska said. “They don’t think it’s possible for us to have full state funding, but I think that they are wrong.”

Malone says that cuts have not been equally distributed across campuses and inter-departmentally. He said that the cuts to particular divisions and resources have made it seem like the administration targets particular groups.

“All students are affected in some way, but the cuts have also been particularly targeted to students of color in terms of accessibility to the UC,” Malone said. “Programs like American studies, community studies and the lack of ethnic studies continue to impact these communities that are already being hit hard by both the UC and the state’s policy.”

The possibility of bringing an ethnic studies major to UCSC — the only UC aside from Merced that does not have one — will be one of the main discussion points on March 2.

Organizers hope the momentum of March 1 will roll over to the events planned for March 2. The ad-hoc group of organizing students plan to have snake walks on campus to draw more students for the noon rally. The rally will be situated around a carnival aspect with artwork, skits and various speakers to educate students on the complexity of budget cuts.

“We do talk a bit about ethnic studies developing here,” Malone said. “I mean, it’s not going to make up for what’s been done … but it’s something that needs to be done.”

Third-year history and sociology Carol Hernandez is part of the March 2 organization group. She said that students’ experiences in overcrowded classrooms, the unbalanced ratio of teacher aides to students, the cut resources and the cuts to certain majors need to be openly discussed among faculty, workers and students along with the administration.

“The focus is imagining a new university,” Hernandez said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean diversity in the demographics — it means diversity in ideologies and perspectives and experiences. It’s a start, and in that start you start with that dialogue and conversation that could eventually lead to some structural change.”

As UCOP continues to cut services and students become more reliant on measure money to keep those services, the regents are considering stealthily taxing new fees. For every new measure that gets passed, UCOP plans to take 2 percent of the fee. Measure fees are usually student proposed and are voted on by students.

For example, when the regents cut UCSC’s budget last year, the library was forced to trim its hours. Students passed a measure to pay extra and keep the resources available.

On Feb. 8, student regent-designate Alfredo Mireles Jr. said he didn’t even know about the tax, so obviously nothing has been done at the regent level on our behalf thus far. He did say, however, that the tax was unfair and that he would fight against it in the future. He has consistently brought the student voice — and vote — to discussions at the regents’ table, but the regents have still decided to increase fees.

If taxes are necessary — although fees have been raised enough — they should be kept within their local university and be used for projects that are tangible to the students paying them. If a UC Santa Cruz student has to pay more as a result of raised taxes, then why should those funds be used to save jobs or build new research centers at UC Irvine or UC Berkeley?

They shouldn’t. Taxes raised on campus should be kept on campus.

Ginny Sullivan, a second-year from New Mexico, is one of many students considering leaving the University of California to find a more affordable and higher quality education. Photo by Andrew Allio.

“I have a twin sister and everything always has to be fair,” Abe said. “When I compared my expenses here at UCSC to hers at Rutgers, it was double what she was paying. After [that], I knew I would come home.”

UC regents have made a goal of increasing out-of-state student enrollment to 10 percent of the total UC population. The $23,000 that these students bring to the university in annual fees is considered a way to mitigate the effects of state budget cuts. Campuses systemwide are scrambling to revamp recruitment of these high-paying students.

UCSC is focusing mainly on Internet resources such as CollegeWeekLive as a method of recruiting high achieving students from out of state, but have also adjusted more active programs. This year, the “Taking UCSC Home” program — which utilizes student volunteers to outreach at high schools in their hometown — has been extended to winter break in an effort to increase participation of out-of-state students.

Michelle Whittingham, associate vice chancellor of enrollment and director of admissions at UCSC, said high student fees and lack of financial aid puts the school at a disadvantage when recruiting out-of-state students.

“Since 2007, we have seen a decrease in non-resident enrollment, which is directly related to fee increases,” Whittingham said.

Whittingham said that UCSC has a lot to offer that is unique to the campus.

“The key for us [when recruiting] is that a lot of students are looking for that out-of-state experience. We want to make sure people are aware of the quality of education we offer here.”

At the same time that UC admissions offices step up their recruitment of students outside California, many non-residents are leaving the UC. Last year when Abe told her roommate — New Mexico resident Ginny Sullivan — that she was transferring, Sullivan tried to convince her to stay. Now, Sullivan too is applying to transfer out of California.

Sullivan, a second-year, was attracted to UCSC because she wanted the challenge of being far away from home and because of the prestige of the UC. While she has enjoyed her experience here at UCSC, Sullivan says she does not feel it represents a higher quality of education than she could receive at less expensive universities in other states. An only child of two working parents, she questions whether the UC education she receives is worth the $23,000 more she pays than California residents.

“I could go to another out-of-state school for in-state tuition through the western exchange program. Maybe my parents can scrape by and afford this,” Sullivan said. “But is that the right decision?”

Sullivan said that despite feeling like she is paying for more than she receives, her experience at UCSC has been mostly positive. For this reason, she has not made a firm decision about whether on not she will leave California after this year.

“I’m filling out the applications because I want the option to transfer,” Sullivan said. “I want to give this school a chance to win my heart this year. If at the end of the year I still feel the same underwhelming feeling about the quality of my education, I’m probably going to leave.”

Inside the November 2010 regents meeting, taken Wednesday. Photo by Molly Solomon.

The presence of roughly 300 student protesters and a violent altercation with police the day before prompted a sizable law enforcement presence at Thursday’s meeting as a precautionary measure; however, the day’s proceedings were more subdued than Wednesday’s.

With this increase, the basic undergraduate fees will reach a total of $11,124 per year. The 8 percent increase will provide the UC with an additional $115.8 million for the 2011–2012 school year.

“We’re struggling to maintain the UC under budget conditions that are impossible,” said Norman J. Pattiz, a regent who voted in favor of the measure. “I see no other options but to support this. It’s the responsible thing to do.”

The increase will amount to an additional $822 for students whose family income is above $180,000 per year. For families in the income brackets of $90,000 to $120,000 and $120,000 to $180,000 per year, the increase will be $472 and $688, respectively. Low-income students whose families earn less than $90,000 per year will not see an increase in fees, a point the regents stressed repeatedly before voting took place.

Five members voted in opposition to the increase, including student regent Jesse Cheng, and Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonando, who was particularly vocal in his disapproval and expressed skepticism that every other resource had been explored.

“Have we exhausted everything before increasing fees on students?” asked Maldonado, amid cheers from the few student activists present. “Are we going to cut at the top too? Because this is a two-way street.”

Another dissenting vote came from Regent Charlene Zettel, who spoke with emotion about her refusal to go along with trend of passing the financial burden onto the backs of students.

“We have whacked this group of students in this particular place in time attending the university,” Zettel said.

Many regents referred to the issue at hand as a “long-term structural problem” and expressed their personal struggle in choosing to vote in favor of another fee increase. However, many of these same regents nevertheless voted in favor of the increase, because they saw it as necessary to maintain the quality of a UC education, they said.

Eddie Island voted for the measure, but he cautioned against continued reliance on raising student fees in times of budgetary strife.

“Be careful what you ask for,” Island said in a comment directed at UC Office of the President. “You will get it.”

In one of the more critical speeches delivered by any of the regents, Island described what he sees as a grim reality.

“What we’re doing is accelerating the velocity toward the destruction of something we all hold dear,” Island said.

Protesters clashed with police outside the UC regents’ meeting yesterday. The regents met to discuss a proposed fee increase and faculty pension plan. Photo by Molly Solomon.

Anticipation hung in the air at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay conference center while students and workers demonstrated in opposition to proposed fee hikes and a two-tier pension program.

UC President Mark Yudof dismissed allegations of inefficacy of UC Office of the President presented during the public comment period at the Nov. 17 regents meeting.

“Despite what you’ve heard the drop out rate has been flat,” he said. “This idea that [the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan] is a sham is nonsense.”

Meanwhile, outside the conference center, spectators, activists and journalists tried to access the public meeting. However, new protocol for regents meetings put a stop to the process of credentialing reporters, giving police officers the authority to deny entrance to anyone.

UCOP director of media relations Peter King blamed a San Francisco Chronicle article for this change.

King said reporters displaying press passes and abstaining from participating in any demonstrative actions will still be afforded the appropriate rights in the event that police dismiss protesters.

Inside the conference room, UC Student Association president Claudia Magaña urged the regents to avoid imposing another fee increase.

“Fee increases are no longer an option,” she said. “We have given too much.”

Magaña presented student testimonials as evidence of the negative impact of student fee hikes.

Student regent Jesse Cheng and student regent designate Alfredo Mireles Jr. agree that it is the state’s and UC’s responsibility to provide quality higher education to its own residents.

“The thing about alternative revenue is that it does give up this idea of public education,” Mireles said. “It seems impossible to have more students, fewer classes and the non-residential students not pushing out California students.”

Yudof denies this.

“We’re not privatizing,” he said. “My problem is the state legislature doesn’t want to fund the Master Plan.”

After the public comment session, an estimated 300 protesters assembled outside the building.

UCSC student organizer Brian Malone accused the regents of being apathetic.

“They’re not even pretending even a little anymore that they care,” he said.

One group of protesters attempted crossing the police line by overwhelming a single police officer stationed at the conference center’s stairway entrance from the parking garage.

UCSF police chief Pamela Roskowski reported that the officer responded to the advances of the crowd by drawing his baton. Peter Haul, a UC Merced student took possession of the baton and struck him on the head with it.

Haul was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Roskowski said that after the officer recovered his baton, he drew his gun when the crowd continued to advance toward him.

By the end of the day, 13 people were arrested. Roskowski said seven of those detained were UC Berkeley students and one student each was arrested from UC Santa Cruz, UC Merced, UC Davis and Peralta Community College. Two more people were also arrested.

Fifteen people were hit with pepper spray and four police officers were reportedly injured.

“There was excessive force used — this is the way the UC maintains power over students,” Malone said.

UC Berkeley student Victor Mendez, among the 15 pepper-sprayed, said he was both pleased that this dispute would merit the attention of the regents and media outlets.

“I hope this gets better and by better I mean I hope we shut this shit down,” he said. “So besides my burning face, I feel fucking incredible.”

Roskowski declined criticism of UCSF PD and SFPD of using excessive force.

“I have no information to tell me protocol was not followed,” she said.

In the last open session of they day, a joint committee of the UC Board of Regents approved an action item to change “student fees” to “tuition” that will be voted on Nov. 18.

Student regents Cheng and Mireles expressed concern about the hastiness with which the motion was passed.

“It’s a significant change to the Master Plan and although we’ve been paying what feels like tuition for years now, it merits notice, and it’s disappointing,” Mireles said. “Those of us who believe in the Master Plan still think there should be fees, not tuition.”

Video by Scott Haupenthal

Students gathered in protest of the budget cuts to be discussed today at the UC regents meeting. The rally took place on campus on Tuesday. Photo by Molly Solomon.

The potential 8 percent fee increase would amount to an additional $822 per student, annually if passed. Changes in workers’ benefits include a proposed increase in the amount employees contribute to their retirement plans and a gradual reduction in retiree health premiums.

“I’m worried about my pension, but I need to work,” said a dining hall employee as marchers attempted to hold a sit-in inside the University Center.

The worker and his fellow employees tried to close the entrance shared by the University Center and the Colleges Nine and Ten Dining Hall when protesters attempted to enter. Some students positioned their bodies in front of the door to keep an entrance open.

In a campuswide e-mail, Alison Galloway, campus provost and executive vice chancellor, said that the DAG will address the responsibilities of demonstrators and the consequences for participants who violate campus policy.

“I would like to see faculty, students and staff represented on this committee,” Galloway said in the e-mail.

Inside the temporarily closed building, a server and a dining hall patron attempted to speak out against the demonstrators’ actions. Their voices were drowned out by the shouts of protesters.

After the group left the attempted sit-in at the University Center, it began heading toward the final destination, Quarry Plaza.

“Hit the street!” students yelled out. Several people flowed onto the road, almost not noticing the TAPS bus that nearly struck them.

After being halted for about two and a half minutes, another TAPS bus driver shared his view on the situation.

“I’m in solidarity with what’s going on right now,” said the TAPS driver.

Some of the marchers stormed into the bus. “Out of the bus and into the streets!” they said.

Fourth-year Merrill student Elena Pasquez, a participant in the event, commented on the turnout.

“It’s just disappointing to see the lack of student turnout here, because this is something that affects everyone, not just students — workers, faculty, TAs,” Pasquez said.

In contrast to last year’s November demonstrations, which drew hundreds, Tuesday’s rally began slowly with a crowd of about 40 gathered in the Porter Quad.

“If they’re not going to come to the protest, we’ll bring the protest to them,” said a woman in command of the bull horn.

Demonstrators turned the rally into a march, as the group advanced up to Kresge, hoping to gain recruits.

Nestor Rivera, fourth-year Kresge student and the organizing director for Student Union Assembly, attended the event. He said that the event is closely tied to aspects of his position and viewed it optimistically.

“People are still here,” Rivera said. “It was a good turnout.”

The march halted at the intersection in between Quarry Plaza and Cowell. Some students blocking the road began playing with a soccer ball and a hacky sack.

A young woman got a hold of the loudspeaker before the group disbanded.

“Let’s have a clap,” she said. “Let’s pat ourselves, and go to UCSF tomorrow.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

After all the rallying and demanding that the state reinvest in higher education, yet another proposed fee increase is on the table to be voted on at the regents meeting next Thursday.

The proposal, an 8 percent fee increase for the 2011–2012 fiscal year, which equates to an $822 raise in yearly payment, is disconcerting on many levels. It reduces what little faith we as students have in the UC governing system even further. It makes an education that is supposed to be public even less accessible and depicts a obscenely clear image of the bleak future structure of the UC system.

After voting for the 32 percent fee increase last November, UC president Mark Yudof and the regents told us to go to the state legislatures, not to Yudof and the regents, and to demand that the state reinvest in higher education. They said, “March on the capitol: Rally, and we will rally with you.”

We did. Thousands of us did. We did just as they suggested, and came from all 10 UCs and demanded on the steps of the capitol for the state to reinvest in us. The state did. And yet, our fees are still going up.

The state reinvested 12 percent more in higher education than in the previous year, granting $2.9 billion to the UC system in this year’s budget — nearly half of the UC’s budgeted educational expenditures. The other half is paid for almost entirely by student fees. Around $371 million of the $2.9 billion was granted to cushion the cuts that the UC has sustained in the past three years.

Our rallying and demands worked — at the state level. And it’s still not enough.

Yudof and the regents told us that they were not the problem. They said it was out of their control, their hands were tied. So we rallied. Our demands of the state were acknowledged, and yet we saw the same end result — another fee increase. The deflection has come full circle.

Already, students pay roughly 40 percent of their education, and it must stop there. We, as a state, are embarking on a repudiation of the system that has set California apart for over a century: a public secondary education system. The increases are indicative of a trend: privatization.

We must demand that Yudof and the regents stop deflecting. Yes, the state should give more to higher education, but the regents are not powerless. It is time for them to take responsibility — they must vote “no” on yet another fee increase. They must come up with alternatives that are not in violation of the intrinsic ideals of the University of California system.

Education for the public, by the public is something to be cherished. We are losing out on the beauty of that philosophy because no one wants to pay for it. We are rapidly approaching an ideal more attuned to “education for some of the public, by the public who can afford it.”

If this fee increase passes — and let’s be real, the chances that regents will not vote in favor of yet another fee increase are about as good as Yudof offering to make less than the president of the United States — our fees will have gone up 40 percent in one year.

This number is nothing short of absolutely ridiculous. Though our outrage was heard in Sacramento last year, it is imperative that we keep our presence at the forefront of state legislation and also make our outrage heard in San Francisco.

As students in this system, we must be informed about the proposals on the table and be present at these meetings. At these gatherings, decisions are made about our education and, when the student presence is dismal, it reflects poorly on the student body and gives us less clout in the decision-making process — and when proposals such as this are on the table, student presence is even more necessary.

We must put faces behind the dollar bills. Otherwise, we are just figures on a failing business model.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Now that Jerry Brown has taken the gubernatorial seat, the California Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act will once again be up for passage. Likewise, the federal DREAM Act, a pathway for high-achieving, undocumented students to gain citizenship, will soon face a new Republican majority Congress. The results could affect students and veterans alike at UCSC and elsewhere.

Currently, many undocumented high school students are denied the opportunity to attend college due to lack of financial support. The only form of financial aid they are afforded falls under AB 540, a bill that states undocumented high school graduates who have attended a California high school for three or more years can pay in-state tuition — thousands of dollars lower than out-of-state tuition. In addition, without citizenship, graduates exit college with very limited choices, their only job options being those that do not require social security numbers. This essentially renders their degrees useless.

The California DREAM Act, if passed, would give undocumented AB 540 students equal opportunity to receive the same financial aid a citizen receives for any state college or university from the state of California.

Claudia Magaña, external vice chair of the Student Union Assembly at UC Santa Cruz, offered some insight on why the University of California Student Association (UCSA) has made passing the California DREAM Act its primary campaign this year.

“For every student that is enrolled in a UC, 32 percent of what we pay in fees goes into this pot for financial aid, and the financial aid is distributed based on merit to all students,” Magaña said. “Undocumented students pay into this, but they have no access to that money. So that’s a big issue.”

Magaña said that in September, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the act, it was the state’s large deficit that prevented the act’s passage. The act would add an estimated $40 million to the already increasing California deficit, according to an article posted in September on examiner.com.

“The main argument against it was a fiscal issue,” Magaña said. “The state is in a big deficit, and the governor said we couldn’t afford it.”

Still, Magaña has hope for the future of the DREAM Act not only for California, but on the federal level.

“We just contacted Jerry Brown’s office, and he said he’d sign it,” Magaña said. “What I really want to see pass is the Federal DREAM Act to give students access to citizenship. Because in the end, what are they going to do with their degrees once they graduate?”

Prospective applicants of the federal DREAM Act must have come to the United States before the age of 16 and hold a high school diploma or GED equivalent. Applicants must have lived in the United States for at least five years. Once accepted, the student will be set on a six-year track to citizenship, unlike the California DREAM Act, which only offers greater access to financial aid.

Another main benefit offered by the federal DREAM Act is that it expands aid and gives temporary residency status to people who plan to serve in the military, regardless of whether they have a green card.

Support for the act has come from an unexpected place since its first proposal in 2001, said Daniel Wilson, Veterans Student Support Coordinator for the Veterans Education Team Support (VETS) program on campus.

“In 2005, the Department of Defense listed the DREAM Act as a No. 1 priority, which is really odd,” Wilson said. “Because we were in two heavy wars at the time, we had recruitment issues. This act would increase recruitment.”

Although the DREAM Act potentially poses financial problems for students who are citizens of the United States, Wilson said, he believes the benefits for high-achieving undocumented people outweigh these costs.

“The argument against it would be that these people without citizenship are taking money away from the financial aid fund that could go to American citizen students,” Wilson said. “[But] my experience with the veteran community is that it is highly expected that people who serve in the military should receive citizenship.”

UCSC students have been fighting on behalf of these issues for a while. Third-year Chris Cuadrado, a Latin American and Latino studies major, took part in a protest at Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office earlier this year, and is passionate about passing the federal DREAM Act.

“It will contribute to the decriminalization of undocumented persons,” Cuadrado said in an e-mail. “It will make state funding, like FAFSA, available to undocumented youth, ultimately alleviating the stresses of college life for AB 540 students.”

In Wilson’s opinion, both the federal and state DREAM Acts, though different, provide a chance to harness the potential of all the people who live in the United States, no matter where they hail from.

“Intelligence is evenly distributed across the planet. It doesn’t care where your parents are from or your heritage,” Wilson said. “There are a lot of smart people out there without support because of the decisions that their parents made.”

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

The lack of general understanding regarding the purpose and relevance of the Apple iPad has caused a lot of controversy since its release in April. Is it a laptop, an electronic reader? Now, the controversy continues, this time within one of our libraries at UC Santa Cruz.

The McHenry Library now has five iPads that students or faculty can check out for four hours at a time. In total, the five 16-gigabyte Wi-Fi gadgets cost $2,800, which comes out to $560 per iPad.

After experiencing a $1.9 million cut in their already dwindling budget, the library administrators thought that what the students really needed was iPads.

But what can the iPad possibly do to enhance our learning experience?

According to the UCSC Library Facebook page, the iPads were bought because “we wanted to continue our recent experience with small scale projects that offer students access to technologies they might not otherwise have.”

Admirable as it is that our library wants to keep us on the cutting edge of technology, this was just the wrong time for the purchase to be made.

Couldn’t any of that money have been used to keep the library open a few more hours in a quarter, or to add another staff member? While $2,800 isn’t very much, it’s still something, and it could have been put to better use.

Anything the iPad is able to do can be done anywhere else, in a completely viable way, within the library. Need to read something on E-Reserve, or conduct research for an essay? The library offers a computer lab with multiple computers for just those purposes.

It’s difficult to see a real use for the iPads, beyond allowing students to fool around on them, say, “Ooh” and “Ahh,” and then return them. They are useless.

We, as a campus, do not need iPads. What we need are more hours in the library. What we need is for the lines of communication between us and the administration to be open, and a change in the way the UC is being run and opperated. Transparency is paramount.

We had protests all last year, and have already had one this year, which pointed out ways in which the administration wastes money on items that are not essential to the school.

It’s the little things, like five iPads, that always, ultimately add up.

Mismanagement of finances has become a recurring trend, and it will continue as long as the student body goes along with it.

McHenry Library now offers five iPads for student checkout. The touchscreen computers were bought in June with end-of-the-year discretionary funds, a decision that has raised criticism in light of budget cuts and limited library hours. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Pressing a dime-sized button at the bottom of the 10-by-8-inch touchscreen platform lights up the iPad and its applications, and with it, the newest gadget at McHenry Library.

Jenesis Bonilla, a fourth-year Oakes student, heard from a friend about the library’s new acquisition, and went to see for herself.

“I did not know they had iPads,” Bonilla said. “[I checked it out] just to actually play with it. I’ve never actually been able to use it or experience it.”

Virtual pages with application icons slide from left to right with the touch of a finger across the tablet computer’s smooth screen. 3D Brain, Amazon Kindle, New York Times’ Editor’s Choice, NPR, Pulse Newsreader, the Elements, Wall Street Journal and World Factbook are among the 41 applications equipped in the iPads. Netflix, Facebook, YouTube, Brushes and Virtuoso are included as well. An application to annotate directly on PDF files was also added, per the request of a student user.

The new gadgets allow students the chance to use these applications for both schoolwork and entertainment.

“I’m going to play with it for a bit, and then I have o­nline articles that I have to read, so might as well just read them off of here,” Bonilla said.

Calling it an experiment to see how popular iPads are among students, Greg Careaga, the head of teaching and learning services at McHenry, confirmed in an e-mail that for the past three and a half months the five iPads together have circulated 274 times, averaging out to 17 times per day.

The iPads have been available since late June for four-hour checkouts by students, and late fee charges apply as they do to other books or electronics.

On the UCSC Libraries’ Facebook page, a post informing students about the new iPads received two “likes” and one comment by fourth-year Kresge student Samuel Corbin.

“Students have to levy a fee against themselves in order to get slightly more reasonable hours because the library budget is so tight,” Corbin said on the Facebook post, “but the library is buying IPADS?”

In response to Corbin’s statement, the UCSC Library Facebook account wrote, “We wanted to continue our recent experience with small scale projects that offer students access to technologies they might not otherwise have.”

An estimated $2,800 was spent on the five iPads, which included the cases and some software, university librarian Ginny Steel said.

“[The iPads] were bought with a small amount of year-end discretionary money that we had last year after scraping and saving all year long,” she said. “We got the iPads in June. The [fees charged to increase library hours] weren’t paid until the fall. We are very clear that we are using that funding to restore the library hours.”

College Nine fourth-year Clare Angami compared the utility of iPads against the laptops that McHenry already rents out to students.

“A lot of things, such as the iPad, are new innovations to technology,” Angami said. “But … given the context that we were overcharged for library hours, I feel that whatever the iPad can bring, we have already fulfilled those needs for the students in renting laptops and having computer labs.”

From a scale of one to 10, Subhas Desa, professor and undergraduate director of the Information Systems and Technology Management Program, would give the necessity of iPads a two or a three.

“Is it necessary? I would say probably not,” Desa said. “I think the world would still go on and people would be doing what they have to without the iPads.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

In response to a resolution passed by the UCSC Student Union Assembly (SUA), Chancellor Blumenthal has increased the voting threshold for campus-based fees in this year’s campus elections from 25 percent to 33 percent.

In campus elections each measure must pass with a 51 percent voter approval. The voting threshold is the percentage of students who must vote on a measure in order for the vote to be valid.

If the voting threshold is not met, the measure is automatically defeated. This was the case last year when only 3,139 of the total 15,719 — or 19.97 percent — of students participated in the elections.

According to the resolution passed by SUA, UCSC’s undergraduates currently pay the most compulsory campus-based student fees of the UC system, 27 referenda totaling $1,073.41 in fees a year.

Members of the SUA, including Commissioner of Academic Affairs Matt Palm, say the previous threshold was too low, allowing for a small number of students to levy a fee against the entire student population.

“We feel very strongly that if we are all going to be taxed, more students need to agree to it and vote,” Palm said. “We didn’t want a continued situation where all students can be taxed, often without knowing what is going on, at the discretion of a small minority of students actually voting.”

The SUA considered the voting thresholds of some other UC campuses in determining the 33 percent figure; however, the threshold differs on each campus because University policy grants the authority to determine campus voting thresholds to the chancellors.

“Each Chancellor is delegated the authority to determine the voting threshold on their campus, Chancellor Blumenthal has agreed to change it for this year, because of the SUA resolution,” Campus Elections Commissioner Lucy Rojas said.

While the intent of the change is to require more student participation in elections, it will also make it more difficult for students to pass fees in support of services facing cuts from other campus funding sources.

“This policy will impact the ability of referendum to pass — in the future if the sustainability office needs funding, or OPERs wants a referendum to keep the gym open longer, it will be harder to get referendum to pass, but not impossible,” Palm said.

In the past 10 years the campus elections participation has only reached 33 percent twice, and failed to meet the previous 25 percent threshold three times.

The average voter turn out since 2000 has been 27.01 percent, with the highest turnout of 37.02 percent for the emergency election to decide Measure 7 in Winter 2003. The lowest turn-out was the following year with 13.35 percent of students participating in the spring 2004 elections.

Due to the ability of voters to abstain from voting on measures individually, some measures may have failed to meet the voting threshold and therefore failed even if the overall elections participation did meet it.

Campus administrators echo the sentiment that while the higher threshold may make it more difficult to create new fees, it will not be impossible.

“Passing measures is still very possible, it’s just a matter of implementing good outreach and marketing,” said Rojas.

The move to raise the campus threshold comes after the University Office of the President raised systemwide fees by 32.5 percent, increasing the overall price of a UC education. The increase in fees led administrators and students to reevaluate how much they pay overall.

“Chancellor Blumenthal was very sympathetic to the issue raised by the SUA, especially given the recent increases in UC systemwide fees that are challenging UCSC students and their families,” said Jim Burns, Director of Public Information, in an email.

Blumenthal has requested an opinion poll be placed on this year’s election’s ballot to survey student opinion on the change. If students are in favor of the increased voting threshold it will become permanent.

“In this economic climate, it seemed reasonable to him to temporarily increase the voter threshold for levying new campus fees. But he was uncomfortable doing this longer term without additional student input.” Burns also said in his email.

Photo by Devika Agarwal.

The University of California’s Commission on the Future released its first recommendations on how to balance the ideals of accessible and affordable education with the current realities of dwindling financial resources.

Victor Sanchez is the UC Student Association President and UCSC Student Union Assembly External Vice Chair. The fourth-year Latin American/Latino Studies and sociology double major is also one of the three students on the Commission on the Future. He sat down with City on a Hill Press to discuss the Commission’s recommendations and how a few in particular might cause a riot.

~~~~~

City on a Hill Press: How will the Commission on the Future influence UC polices?

Victor Sanchez: Chairman [Russell] Gould and President [Mark] Yudof are the co-chairs, so it’s hard to say that there won’t be any kind of big, significant reforms.

CHP: What kind of influence, as a student, do you have on the commission?

VS: When you count me and [the two other student regents] we could be a real thorn in everybody’s side. Ultimately, by myself, I was speaking up a lot about the recommendations and the concerns I had in terms of the dependency and reliance on student fees.

CHP: Did you propose any of the 29 recommendations?

VS: The institutional aid for undocumented students. It is a campaign that has been wanting to be won for years in terms of allowing students who have paid into financial aid for years to get some in return. (*Editor’s note: currently, undocumented students pay in-state tuition but are not eligible for financial aid) This recommendation will allow them to see access to those funds. We [the student regents and I] are going to push really hard on that proposal. That’s the golden chip we are looking to take with us and move forward.

CHP: Which, if any, of the proposals do you disagree with?

VS: There are some very poor ones. Specifically when you look at funding strategies. There are two proposals. One is to allow fees to increase 5 percent each year for five years … basically bringing fees up to around thirteen thousand dollars. The second [proposal] is for fees to rise 15 percent each year for five years, allowing it [tuition and fees] to get upward of around twenty thousand dollars per year.

It was funny because when we started off with the remarks they had one slide [with the] regent’s priorities and I didn’t see [ a priority of having] ‘no student fees,’ so I made a comment, ‘This is great because we keep hearing that you guys are so reluctant to raise our fees yet it fails to show up on a priority list.’

Ultimately, it’s just unfortunate that they can’t come up with any better solutions than to put the burden on [students’] backs.

I told a [commission member] on the side, ‘If you all pass these funding strategies to raise fees for five years … you’re gonna have riots … it’s going to be real bad.’

CHP: Were there any other solutions other than to raise student fees?

VS: The conversation about alternative sources of revenue hasn’t happened [on the commission] and [commission members] do not want them to happen. There is a need for them to expand the conversation and start having it.

CHP: Were there any proposals you did not expect?

VS: One was the differential fees by campus. That to me totally undermines the mission of the UC. It deters people away from the University of California. You would now have all these little private universities and it’s like, what’s the point? That was one of the pretty far out proposals that we saw. They want to cut down majors instead of looking at GE requirements, which is a good way to slim down stuff.

CHP: Which ideas do you support?

VS: Institutional aid is one and the three-year undergraduate degree option. A lot of students already do that anyways. That option would be good to have for a lot of folks who are prepared and ready for college. I don’t think there’s anything else though.

Illustration by Louise Leong.

The UC Regents need to get in touch with the students they supposedly represent. Over the past few years, the UC system has slowly moved its way towards a privatized, more expensive education system that has put education farther out of reach for thousands of students.

This has all been discussed and decided within the confines of UC San Francisco, a good distance away from many schools that want to be represented or take part in these discussions. UCSF is a graduate school that recieves over 100 percent of its educational fees back. This favortism towards graduate campuses excludes all the undergrads that make up the majority of the UC system. Regents should return to the policy of rotating to a different campus for each of their six meetings every year. This would allow them to hear more student perspectives during public comment sessions, as they weigh our futures.

This past year, students have voiced their disapproval with protests and strikes across the state, both on campuses and at the capital. But the regents aren’t getting the hint. Recently, a member of the UC Commission on the Future pitched an idea of annual fee increases ranging anywhere from 5 to 15 percent over the next five years. This proposal comes at a time when the UC system is experiencing the largest fee increase in its history.

Nothing is for sure, and members of the commission have made this clear with the inclusion of a disclaimer underneath the policy suggestions. It reads, “Nothing in this policy constitutes a contract, an offer of a contract, or a promise that any fees ultimately authorized by The Regents will be limited by any term or provision of this policy.” But the fact that the regents are even considering a new fee increase is unacceptable and frightening.

The regents will do what they please to push the UCs toward their vision, and from the looks of it they plan to do so without consulting the student populace. Aside from the much-ignored public comment portion of the regent meetings, during which Richard Blum usually ends up asleep at the wheel, the only way student opinions are expressed and accounted for is through the one student regent on the panel. It’s not the fact that students across the state are not speaking their minds, it’s the fact that the regents don’t care to listen, and would prefer to pursue their own goals and visions.

The regents need to recognize that students are not going to tolerate having their fees increased again while their voices continue to go unheard. Students want to have a say in where their money goes. They should not have to see their fees increased by a group of undemocratically appointed officials who do not have the students’ best interests in mind.

The UCs have seen some positive changes due to the protests — most notably when the governor cited student activism as an influence in his decision to cut prison spending in order to increase finances towards public education. The regents should look to continue this momentum in the state by working to push education bills like Assembly Bill 656, which imposes a gas and oil tax on any producer and puts that money back into public education. Instead they are looking for ways to dip back into the students’ pockets.

The regents need to use the student population as an asset and an ally, and raising our fees again is not the way to do it. Not giving us a reasonable amount of say in decisions that affect our whole system is not the way to do it. We need to come together to build a UC system that reflects what we all want, not just what the regents believe to be best.

Illustration by Kiri Rasmussen.

After five months of digging through what would eventually become a 2.5-inch-thick binder full of ballot language, fee allocations, and budget policy, one thing becomes clear: getting hold of public records is one thing, but making sense of it all is a whole other story.

On Feb. 22, Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students Alma Sifuentes addressed UCSC’s Student Union Assembly to inform students of several concerns that have been raised on campus-based fees collected from summer session students.

“In Student Affairs — during summer session, there has been referenda money that has been identified and withdrawn and then allocated into areas that perhaps may not have been appropriate,” Sifuentes said. “ … We are actually collecting money from a referendum that was not authorized to be collected in that particular quarter [summer session].”

Students vote on measures, or referenda, to create campus-based fees to support campus programs and services. Although the ballot language of each measure specifies which programs the fee will go to, the rate the fee will be assessed at and when it will be charged, it was not applied in determining the 2007-2009 campus fee level and the distribution of those funds.

Setting the Fee Level

At UCSC, measure ballot language began including a charge for summer session students in 2003.

According to a section from the UC Office of the President (UCOP) November 2000 University of California Fee Policies Related to Expanded Summer Instruction document, “Each campus should determine whether services not now provided are needed during the summer. … If additional services or programs are necessary, the campus should calculate an appropriate prorated fee level to be charged during the summer term.”

Each campus-based fee is set by the language of its measure. However, the UCOP policy grants each campus the authority to determine the amount that will be charged for each fee in the summer.

UCSC administrators did not take into account ballot language when determining the fee level for the summer campus fee.

Free Moini, principal budget analyst for the Planning and Budget office at UCSC, said in an e-mail to City on a Hill Press, the ballot language is “difficult to interpret.”

“In many cases since the old [referenda] make no reference to summer and back then whenever anyone talked about the academic year, the meaning was fall/winter/spring,” Moini said in the e-mail. “Even the newer referenda that do mention summer may have been developed at times before the campus figured out how summer would operate.”

Victor Sanchez, external vice chair of SUA, said the university has taken advantage of the policy to the effect of misleading students and inappropriately distributing funds.

“It is in direct contradiction to the intention of the initial referenda, and it goes to show how the vagueness of a policy can be manipulated, and how that opportunity can be used in a manner that is just not justifiable,” he said.

Lack of student consultation is also a point of contention for many student leaders. Robert Singelton, chief of staff to the SUA chair, said that students were not consulted in this process.

“That is the biggest problem,” Singleton said. “We have a student fee advisory committee (SFAC) for just this purpose — it’s not like there aren’t students who could have been consulted, [campus administration] just chose not to. Finding out the intent of the choice not to consult students is really what I’m interested in.”

While in previous years there was a summer fee to support OPERS, transportation, the libraries and computer labs, 2007 was the first year UCSC began assessing campus-based fees.

The amount of campus-based fees that will be charged to summer session students must be set and published on the summer session website before students begin enrolling. When the deadline came to set the fee level for 2007, there was no time to review and establish a process so it was set at an increased rate of $150.

“No decision had been made by the time the summer 2007 fee level needed to be published, so the vice provost [Ladusaw] who oversees summer session set the level at $150,” Sifuentes said.

In 2008 the campus adopted a new model for assessing fees. William Ladusaw, vice provost for undergraduate education, oversees summer session for the campus, and works with the Planning and Budget office to determine what the fee structure should be.

In an e-mail, Ladusaw explained that the new fee structure was designed to keep summer session more affordable by assessing a fee that is lower than other quarters while still being able to collect revenue for the campus.

The new process was to assess students the full transit fee in addition to half the cost of the other campus-based fee. From undergraduates in 2008 this brought in a total of $738,504. Of this total, $24,177 went to return-to-aid, a UCOP policy which requires at least 25 percent of all new fees or increases to existing fees after 2006 to go to need-based financial aid, as required by UCOP policy. The remaining $679,463 went to measure funding accounts.

Distribution of funds

Once the fees are all collected, the next step is to distribute the funds to the appropriate measures. According to Sifuentes, in 2007 the $150 campus fee was distributed with $82.50 to the transit fee, $30 for OPERS, and the rest split — minus return-to-aid — within Student Affairs between Student Organization Advising and Resources (SOAR) and Judicial Affairs.

In the Judicial Affairs budget for 2008 there is an entry, an adjustment in fiscal terms, for $13,353 from Measure 7 funds. Measure 7 is a $51 per quarter fee that supports a wide range of student programs and services within Student Affairs.

The ballot language of the fee states that “the funds generated by the fee will fall under the purview of the student fee advisory committee.” However, according to students on the SFAC, the committee was not consulted in the decision to allocate funds to Judicial Affairs. The unit had not previously received funding from any campus-based fee and had not been included in the ballot language of Measure 7.

The allocation of funds to Judicial Affairs is highly concerning to some SUA students.

“Frankly, I don’t know how that’s not illegal — Judicial Affairs just randomly got that money one year, basically at the expense of students not knowing what is going on,” Singelton said.

Victor Sanchez of SUA said that with steep budget cuts pulling funding away from student programs, it is important that all funds brought in by campus-based fees go where students have specified they go through voting on measures.

“It is not justifiable for us to see that money go to [Judicial Affairs]. We have resource centers being cut, our programs are being cut, outreach programs are being cut — there is a need for [campus-based fees] to go where they are intended to go,” Sanchez said.

In 2008, funds were distributed to non-Student Affairs units. According to documents released by information practices $304,274 went to transportation, $3,847 to renewable energy, $3,419 to theater arts, and $320 to the Seymour Marine Discovery Center.

The remaining funds, $367,603, were given to Student Affairs as a lump sum for distribution.

“When allocating the proceeds, Student Affairs has discretion (within some limitations) to direct more or less to individual fees [rather] than using the straight 50 percent formula. The 50 percent figure is just how we come up with the total amount students will pay,” Moini said in an e-mail.

The responsibility of distribution decisions fell to Sue Matthews, acting assistant vice chancellor of Student Affairs Business and Administration, and AVC Sifuentes, with final approval from Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Felicia McGinty.

“Whether you’re a student during the summer or the regular year, you’re a student,” Sanchez said. “For that money to be lumped into one pot and then distributed at the discretion of someone who is not a student is not the way we should be moving.”

This is complicated through the fact that some of the measures that received no funding had been voted upon by students to be paid for in the summer, while other measures that received funds were not.

“I think it is an irresponsible mismanagement of funds,” said SUA Chair Kalwis Lo. “Students decided how they want referendum money to be spent, and if it’s not spent the way students have intended for it to be spent then I think that it’s illegal. And it is something that I definitely do not support.”

Programs whose measures recieved summer funding were SUA, College Student Governments, Engaging Education, and the Campus Sustainability Program.

Measure 7, the student programs fee, received a higher allocation of funds than any of the other measures, collecting extra funding through the fact that some other measures received none of the collected funds. The student fee advisory committee was not consulted in the distribution of the $147,406 allocated to the measure.

At the discretion of Sifuentes, Matthews and McGinty, $11,735 went to SOAR, $73,264 to address deficits in the Student Affairs divisional collection center, and $62,406 to offset a deficit in the Student Affairs employee benefits pool. The collection center funds are used to support merit increases and other salary increases.

Amanda Buchanan, Oakes representative on the student fee advisory committee (SFAC) first heard about the summer fee process while attending the SUA meeting at which Sifuentes initially presented the issue. Buchanan was concerned that the SFAC had not been informed about these fee allocations.

She said the university is responsible for consulting students on financial decisions regarding student fees.

“It’s outrageous when huge decisions like this are made by administrators,” she said. “It baffles me that they think they are above the students.”

Sifuentes said continuity issues resulting from changes in staff, paired with a misunderstanding of the fees, led to the problems with collecting and allocating the fees.

“There was a lot of turnover in the division [Student Affairs], and I think that Planning and Budget saw the money as being green, not necessarily student money or other money, and people jumped on making decisions,” Sifuentes said.

In 2007-2008, at the height of a transitional period among staff that saw Elise Herrera-Mahoney replaced by Matthews, McGinty was commissioned to take over for interim Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Jean-Marie Scott.

Sifuentes has asked for SUA and SFAC students to begin working with Student Affairs to review issues regarding the summer campus fees.

Kalwis Lo of SUA said that in rectifying the budget problems, those units should receive funds that were instead distributed to other areas.

Many units did not receive summer funds. These included resource centers, Student Media, Learning Support Services and OPERS, which are supported by measures whose ballot language states that the fees will be assessed to summer students.

“I think the money these units have lost should be recovered somehow, and I would support giving them the full amount back,” Lo said. “Our campus did not have any intentions of this happening, but the fact is it happened, and we need to address it appropriately.”

Sanchez said that steps should also be taken on a systemwide level to eliminate vagueness in student fee policies that may lead to questionable fee allocations.

“Ultimately this is a new chapter in this struggle for accountability and transparency,” Sanchez said. “We can keep saying this, but something needs to be done.”

Illustration by Maggie McManus.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

“Citing decreased state revenue [the governor] has ordered the UC system to absorb an emergency budget decrease for the current fiscal year … The UC Regents will probably institute a student fee surcharge for the spring quarter.”

This passage, sounding like it could be drawn straight from today’s news stories, is from a City on a Hill Press article from 1981. That year the governor, Jerry Brown, instituted cuts to the University of California that led to a 28 percent student fee increase for the 1981-82 school year and 30 percent increase the next year.

State funding cuts to the UC are not a new phenomenon. The measure passed by the UC Regents two weeks ago to raise fees by 32.5 percent within the next year will mark the 15th time UC undergraduates have seen their cost of education increase by 10 percent from the previous year. During this same time, the state of California — the largest single contributor to the UC’s budget — has halved its contributions.

The Current Crisis

“The reason the UC’s are getting less state funding is because the state has less funding. It’s that simple,” said Steve Boilard, the director of higher education for the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the California Legislature’s nonpartisan policy analysts, in an email. “[This past year] the state has experienced a drop-off of tens of billions of dollars.”

In fact, the past three fiscal years in the state of California have been doleful at best. According to the California Department of Finance website, the state’s general fund has dropped from $102 billion in the 2007-2008 fiscal year to $84 billion for the current fiscal year.

“Revenue coming into the state treasury is highly volatile, resulting from the way our taxes and other income streams are structured,” Boilard said. “Almost all sectors of state government have experienced significant declines in state funding, including social services, health, resource protection.”

The State of California has four main funding priorities: K-12 education, prisons, Health and Human Services, and higher education. All four took hits in this current major economic crisis. According to the California Department of Finances, in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, K-12 education lost 20 percent of its funding from the previous year, while higher education lost 14 percent. In the same fiscal year, Health and Human Services and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lost 13 percent and 17 percent of their funding, respectively.

But for the last 40 years, according to statistics on the Department of Finance website, it has been higher education that has seen continuous funding cuts, receiving a smaller and smaller percentage of overall spending from the state’s general fund.

“You can see that the state has other priorities,” said Patrick Lenz, the University of California’s Vice President for the Budget, “[and] the problem is in the state’s fiscal system.”

In 1976, higher education received 1.8 billion dollars — almost 18 percent of the $10.37 billion in the state of California’s general fund. In the 2009-10 school year, higher education will receive 12.5 percent of the $84.5 billion of the state general fund distributions. This is while the population of students in the UC system has nearly doubled since 1976, growing from 121,791 to 222,000 in 2009 according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

“Demand has never been greater for higher education,” Lenz said. “We [the University of California] have 14,000 more students than the state pays for — that costs an extra 155 million dollars.”

In contrast, the other three main state programs have seen increases in their proportion of the California budget since the late 1970s. K-12 education has seen the biggest increase, from 27 percent in 1976 to 41.5 percent in 2009. This can be partially attributed to Proposition 98, a ballot measure approved by California voters in 1988, which mandated a minimum amount of funding for K-12 schools and community colleges.

Funding for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has also received an increasing percentage of state funds, almost tripling from 3.4 percent in 1976 to 9.7 percent in 2009. This follows the rise in incarceration rates in California. California has the third largest prison system in the country, trailing only the federal government and the state of Texas. Prisons also have powerful advocates in Sacramento. In a 2004 article Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters called the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a union representing 30,000 correctional officers in the state, the “state’s most powerful union.”

The State and the Student

Money from the state along with student fees and the UC general fund (nonresident tuition and operating costs from the state and federal government) are the core of the University of California’s budget, making up 28 percent or $2.5 billion of the UC’s $19 billion in funds.

This $2.5 billion pays the salaries and benefits for faculty and staff, funds the costs of equipment and utilities and extends financial aid to students in need. The remaining $16.5 billion are restricted funds, or funds that are given to the UC for grants and research and can only be used by certain institutions, departments or labs.

The State of California has contributed less and less to the UC’s overall budget: from 29.6 percent of its expenditures in 1967 to 16.6 percent in 2008. To make up for this decrease, the UC has relied more and more on student fees, which have increased 427 percent since 1965 when UCSC first opened. In this time, student fees have risen from $245 in 1965 (calculated to inflation it is $1,875 in 2008 dollars) to its current level of $8,020 a year.

Since 1967 the percentage of student fees and state expenditures in UC’s core funds have diverged dramatically. In 1967, money from the State of California’s general fund made up 89 percent of the UC’s unrestricted core funds, while student fees made up 6 percent. In 2008, state funds made up only 58 percent while student fees contributed 30 percent.

“Clearly,” Lenz said, “there is a disconnect with the state of California and its system of higher education.”

Solutions?

While UC appropriations from the state of California ebb and flow along with the revenues, neither California citizens nor university leaders see a way to fix this issue.

“The financing of higher education is broken,” said UC President Mark Yudof in an interview with UC student media organizations.

Yudof said he was hesitant to push the UC to ask for refinements in the state’s appropriation process.

“I don’t really think a public university can be the leader in actually proposing reforms,” Yudof said. “I don’t want to politicize us like that. But we stand ready to cooperate with whoever is seriously thinking about these issues … I guess the right role for the university is to play a facilitating role.”

But in an interview with the Sacramento Bee, Yudof cemented the UC reliance on state funding.

“I still think the primary responsibility [of funding] lies with the state of California,” Yudof said. “I have not given up on the state.”

In October, President Yudof issued a report calling for “an expanded federal role” in higher education and asked UC affiliates to “aggressively lobby our lawmakers in Sacramento to have … our funding restored.”

While university leaders are in a quagmire over reliance on the state and its lax funding, residents of California pointed their anger at state officials. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a state-based think-tank, released a poll earlier this month called “California and higher education” that surveyed Californian’s sentiments on higher education.

Those polled were critical of California’s leaders, with 61 percent disapproving of Governor Schwarzenegger’s handling of public higher education while 68 percent disapproved of the legislature’s job on the same issue.

Seventy percent characterized budget cuts to higher education as a “big problem,” while 62 percent were very concerned about increasing tuition and fees for students to deal with state budget cuts.

While 72 percent of those polled believed in the importance of California’s public higher education system to the “quality of life and economic vitality of the state over the next 20 years,” 56 percent of those polled were unwilling to pay higher taxes to make up for state budget cuts to higher education and 68 percent of those polled did not want to increase student fees for the same reason.

“[This poll] came out saying how important the University of California is to Californians,” UC Regent Chairman Russell Gould said. “[Sacramento must] fund it. Stand up for it and fund it!”

The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently estimated that the State of California is facing a $20.7 billion budget gap for the impending 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Next year, if faced with similar cuts from the state, Yudof did not fully rule out any further fee increases.

“I can’t make any categorical promises,” Yudof said, “but I would be very reluctant to do that.”

In wake of the radical actions taken against the recently passed 32.5 percent fee hike, creative writing students developed Stories for Solutions, a blog where students can post poems, narratives, letters and various writing supplements that depict their personal experience with the budget crisis.

Ian Flanagan, a third-year who has made contributions to the blog, views his class’ efforts as “building a movement that isn’t necessarily abrasive so that it appeals to so many people.”

The collective idea came about on the evening of Nov. 18, moments after UC Regents voted to increase UC’s fees by over $2,000 annually for undergrads starting next school year.

“Everybody came into class around five o’ clock really angry,” said graduate student Aliyah Khan, the creative writing instructor. “They wanted to do something but they felt like participating in the occupations isn’t what they wanted to do.”

The blog uncovers student’s stories using different styles and forms, from humourous limerics to slam poems to standard letter format.

Brooke Velasquez, a second-year who monitors the blog’s public submissions, says the blog is subjective.

“It’s not necessarily the truth, [but] it’s someone’s truth,” said Velasquez.

While the blog is open to the public, the creative writing students who founded the blog have publishing power.

“We want a place where we feel safe to voice our own opinions and to hear other peoples opinions,” Velasquez said. “Dialogue is the most educating tool. There hasn’t been a lot of dialogue between students and students … and the powers that be. This is a place where we can [have a] dialogue with each other.”

In addition to forming a blog where students can share their stories, students plan to send UC regents, state legislators and various politicians a hard copy of their parables.

Flanagan sees the writing campaign as means of giving all UC students representation without taking radical action.

Flanagan said, “It’s the simple things, like going out and telling people we have an opportunity to flood this representative’s office with letters — to let them know that there are a lot of students here that are really upset with how this is going without necessarily bringing a front to them. We can appeal to them on their level just by telling our story.”

Leah Henderson, a UCSC fourth-year, said that regardless of whether people respond to the blog, it is beneficial to the students itself.

“I don’t know if [the blog] is going to inspire anything, but at least it’s for us,” Henderson who plans to contribute to the blog by writing letters, said. “[The blog] is not as visible as an occupation … but at least we are not sitting idly by, which I can’t say for many others of the UC system.”

UC president Mark Yudof speaks to reporters after the Finance Committee voted to increase student fees. Photo by Nita Rose-Evans.

A student is escorted out of the Regents meeting at UCLA on Wednesday. Photo by Nita Rose-Evans.

The UC Board of Regents’ Committee of Finance passed two undergraduate educational fee increases — a 15 percent mid-year increase which will take effect in January, coupled with another 15 percent increase for the 2010-2011 school year.

Student Regent Jesse Bernal, a UC Santa Barbara graduate student, was the only committee member to oppose the measure.

“Fairness seems to be highly unbalanced,” Bernal said. “In principal I oppose and will not support the fee increases.”

The proposal will go before the entire Board of Regents on Thursday, Nov. 19.

“It’s probable, but it’s not over ‘til it’s over,” said UC President Mark Yudof on the chances of the measures being passed by the entire board.

The meeting, which was held at UCLA’s Covel Commons, was temporarily adjourned three times due to singing and screaming by students inside. Expletives and screams of “vote no” and “we shall overcome” permeated throughout the meeting, which was open to the public.

Twelve students were arrested at two different points prior to the committee vote and eventually all spectators were cleared out of the room by UC police officers after numerous disruptions. The fee item was passed without any students present.

The first of the fees would begin next quarter and would consist of a system-wide fee of $585 and the second increase would begin in the 2010-11 school year, increasing student fees by $1,344. Overall, student fees will be raised to a yearly total of $10,302, or a 32.5 percent increase in current fees.

UCSC fourth-year and President of the UC Student Association Victor Sanchez spoke to the regents before the vote took place.

“I implore this committee to vote no,” Sanchez said. “If you vote yes, not only will the public perception continue to yield negativity for the UC, but the prospect of working together in a year where thousands have expressed discontent will be lost and severely damaged.”

Before the vote, some members of the finance committee stressed the need for the fee hikes.

“We will make a departure from our core values. Fee increases take us in the wrong direction, but they are necessary,” said regent and committee member Eddie Island. “There must be a limit to student fee increases … [but] I will vote yes. It is reluctant and it will be my first time. I hoped to never do so.”

The regents emphasized that most students, especially those with lower incomes, would not be affected by this fee increase, emphasizing that 33 percent of the revenue from the hikes will go to financial aid.

“We want [high school] graduates in need to know that fees are not a barrier to a UC education,” said Marsha Kelman, UC associate vice-president of policy and analysis. “[The regents] estimated 81 percent of students this year are covered by financial aid, 74 percent of students will be covered by financial aid due to the mid-year fee hikes and 53 percent of students will be covered in the 2010-11 school year.”

In a separate press briefing during lunch recess, President Yudof commented that “If you’re a family making under $70,000, you don’t have a problem, we are taking care of your fees.”

The Finance Committee also approved an expansion of the Blue and Gold Opportunity plan. Under this new plan all undergraduates whose parents make $70,000 a year or less will have their fees covered by the University. The previous threshold for the plan was $60,000.

“What’s happened this year, after a steady erosion over the past 20 years, is this year we hit the negative jackpot,” Yudof said about California’s contributions to the UC.

“The result of budget cuts [from the state] is that we are recommending a mid-year fee increase,” said Patrick Lenz, UC’s vice-president for budget, in a presentation to the regents.

The State of California, currently experiencing it’s worst fiscal crisis in years, subtracted $637.1 million in allocations to the UC in Spring 2009 — leaving the UC with only $2.6 billion in state funding for the 2009-10 fiscal year.

“I think we are doing it in a way that makes sense … [student fee revenue] will end the furlough plan and extend library hours,” Yudof said in a speech addressed to the regents.

Without revenue from fee increases, the UC would have faced a $792 million dollar budget deficit.

Along with hiking fees, the regents approved a budget that will request $913 million from the California State Legislature for the next fiscal year. This money will be requested to alleviate the financial issues that have arisen from the one-time cut of $305 million the legislature made last year. The regents also hope the money will shrink the gap between the number of students currently supported by state funds and the actual number of students attending UCs.

Even if the $913 million is granted, however, the UC will still face a $144 million gap next year.

“We have to fix this,” said John Plotts, the UC assistant vice-president of finance, about the budget deficits, “or we have no future.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

She was stranded in Reno.

After being kicked out of her family’s house with no money, no familiar faces, and no place to stay, Danielle Keck* was stuck. With nowhere else to turn, she dropped her bags off at a hotel and set to the streets.

Her only way to get back to school was to earn enough money for travel, food and tuition. She was left with only two options: exchange her body for cash, or sleep on the street. She chose to have a roof over her head.

“I never thought I was going to get to go back home, in all honesty, or even come back to college,” Keck said. “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do when you have nothing. I mean, maybe it’s a little degrading, but it’s all you have, especially if you have nothing.”

Despite the seemingly extreme situation, Keck is not alone. Education is expensive. The University of California tuition has undergone an increase of nearly 10 percent in the past year, with expectations of further increase in subsequent terms. With the addition of grant programs suffering significant cuts, can students afford a university education anymore?

Danielle Keck found a way.

Keck is a third-year health science major at the University of California, Santa Cruz with a GPA that sets her well on her path to grad school. She is also an escort. A prostitute. A “lady of the night.”

She currently has an income of $4,000 to $5,000 per week, but she claims even that is barely enough to scrape by. She pays for bills, rent, insurance, groceries and tuition on her own.

The fiscal situation that students and their families have been pressed into because of state-wide budget changes have altered lives, and while Danielle Keck stands out, she does not stand alone.

The Money

The local job market is shaky, with very few businesses hiring. A mere 11 percent of the UCSC student population currently holds a paid position on-campus, according to the UCSC Career Center, and only a handful actually make enough to pay their way through school.

“Hiring everywhere is down, but we still have a lot of opportunities for employment. I think you have to work harder to get the jobs, but they’re out there,” said Barbara Silverthorne, UCSC Career Center Internship Program Manager.

The life of the average college student has always been synonymous with economic instability. But when instability turns to desperation, desperate acts are certain to follow, and even those are all too often ground down by the current crisis.

“This is what really makes me angry,” Keck said. “I would have had my tuition paid in full by now, but with the University spike I have to bust my ass even more. And then on top of that I still have some other things to pay for.”

Yudof’s recommended 15 percent increase in in-state undergraduate fees for spring, coupled with a further 15 percent increase in fall 2010, would rocket the UC’s yearly tuition cost above $10,000 for the first time.

Factor in the cost of room and board, among various other living expenses, and a California resident will be paying over $24,000 for one year of university education.

Project You Can, a new UC-wide student scholarship fundraising effort for low-income students, is attempting to alleviate financial stress on low-income students, as are the changes to the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, a program that waives university fees for students with a family income of under $60,000.

While low-income students may be exempt from paying fees, the middle-income bracket has been left hanging out to dry.

This drastic swell in expense is calling budgetary allocations into question.

“The real problem here is that the California state budget has been cut back,” said Dan Friedman, UCSC professor and undergraduate program director of economics. “That’s why tuition has gone up. That’s why my colleagues and I have taken pay cuts. That’s why the job market is so poor. The state budget got trashed.”

Friedman proposes that the federal government go in and help states maintain their spending on essential programs such as education.

“The stimulus is way short of what it should be for helping states. The situation shouldn’t be as bad as it is,” Friedman said.

The Struggle

Because of this bad situation, many students have turned to a market that they know will always pay well: sex.

According to Ed Vincent, talent department recruiter for Kink.com, a popular pornography site based in San Francisco, the number of students who have applied to work for the Web site has increased notably within the past year.

“There’s been so many recently that we’ve added three new types of shoots per week for amateurs who want to see if they want to work in this industry,” Vincent said. “We do about 12 to 15 shoots per month just to accommodate all the new people.”

Vincent described numerous examples of Kink.com models who have used the job to pay for college — be it undergraduate studies or, more recently, graduate school in New York.

Johnny Lang*, a second-year at Cabrillo College, began sex work at 16. He studies social anthropology, and has become a strong advocate of safe sex. He believes that more and more students will soon turn to sex work out of economic necessity.

“I would rather have a regular, decent-paying, hourly job than being a sex worker because obviously it’s a lot more safe,” Lang said. “But if tuition hikes keep going up the way they are and the economy keeps heading the way it is, I’ll eventually be forced into sex work more than I am now, which puts me at further risk.”

He paused, and then added, “It’s a scary reality. It’s a scary reality, but it’s real.”

More and more often, students are turning to dangerous and risky ways to earn cash to stay afloat. Keck understands these risks and has faced the ugly truth underlying these hard economic times. She recounts a particularly powerful memory with a callous frankness.

“I had to fuck an undercover cop so my ass would not go to jail,” Keck said. “I had to have sex with him. He said I had two options: either I screw him, or I’d go to jail. And he showed me his badge and everything.”

When he booted her from the car, he threw a $50 bill at her, saying, “Well it would really be a shame to see you go to jail considering you’re a very nice girl.”

“If I had his gun I would have shot him in the face multiple times and I wouldn’t have minded going to jail for that,” Keck recounted, visibly disturbed and furious.

The psychological effects of this fiscal coercion run far beyond the present dilemma, according to Eileen Zurbriggen, associate professor of psychology with a focus on sexual assault and trauma.

The list of symptoms that prostitutes are at high-risk for are the same as women who have been sexually abused or raped: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and dissociation, to name a few.

“The repetition — repeatedly having to have sex with people you wouldn’t want to be having sex with for your own pleasure — is a huge damaging aspect,” Zurbriggen said. “The more repetition, the more you’d expect it to have consequences.”

She expressed her sympathy for the students who have been backed into this situation, emphasizing the possible long-term damage they may suffer.

“I think it’s really a shame that any student feels that they financially don’t have any other choice than to do these things,” Zurbriggen said. “The loss of privacy that results might not seem like a problem now, but it might become an issue later. I would hope that students would be supported well enough to not have to do any of these things.”

The hazards that Keck and others in her situation have to struggle through are damaging — both physically and psychologically. Our students are stuck in a hole — a hole that only seems to get deeper and darker with every passing week. A hole that they are scrambling to escape out of.

Affordability is becoming less and less attainable in the university sphere. For Keck and Lang, budgetary problems have changed what it means to be a college student.

“I have to get through school and get through life on my own,” Lang said. “It’s just even worse that I would have to go beyond sex work and into debts or loans to find resources to get tuition.”

While families and students wait for an extended hand, Keck and Lang will continue to sell themselves for their education.

“This life corrupts you. Sometimes when I’m at school I just think, ‘This is time I’m losing to earning money right now,’” Keck said. “But then part of me lets that go and is like, ‘Education is better.’ I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life, you know?”

~~~~~

*Indicates name has been changed.

Students from all 10 UC campuses flocked to UCLA to show that they do not support increased student fees. University union leaders who represent teachers, custodial and hospital workers, technical employees and graduate students were present along with workers themselves to voice their views

Chants of “They say cut backs, we say fight back” rocked the crowd as protesters raised signs in unison. Above the crowd messages such as “Last generation college student” and “Debt: My Grad Present” were seen on signs.

Cindy Amobi, a third year Journalism major from UC Irvine, traveled to UCLA to oppose the student fees.

“Even though they pretty much already decided on the vote, it’s important to still come and show our displeasure and solidarity with all students,” she said.

Students began amassing with the commencement of the regent’s meeting at 8:30 a.m. By 10 a.m., students were being escorted out of the public comments section of the meeting for disruptive behavior. Approximately 14 students were arrested for disorderly conduct.

Following a group of students’ attempt to enter the meeting by force, UC police began arriving on the scene armed with batons, pepper spray and other weapons that they aimed at the protesters.

At 12 p.m. police announced that the protest had become in violation of California law. They demanded that the protesters disassemble and informed the crowd that those who did not leave would be arrested, however no further arrests were made.

Despite the police’s actions, UC President Yudof said he could identify with the protesters.

“I feel complete empathy with them. Years ago I might have been out there with them,” Yudof said.

UC Students Association president Victor Sanchez, a fourth-year student at UC Santa Cruz who addressed the Regents on behalf of UC students, felt that the police officer’s actions were unacceptable.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t think it’s warranted. It’s disrespectful to students,” Sanchez said.

Updated 9:29pm Nov 18, 2009

The proposal goes to a  final vote before the entire Board of Regents tomorrow.

“It’s probable, but it’s not over til its over,” said UC President Mark Yudof, on the chances of the fee increases passing tomorrow.

The fee item was passed without any students present. All spectators in the open session were forced to leave by UC police officers after numerous disruptions during the 20 minute public comment period and during the committee on finance’s deliberation. Fourteen students were arrested on two different occasions in the meeting preceding the committee vote.

The first fee increase, a system wide fee of $585 dollars for every undergraduate student,  will begin next quarter.  The second increase kicks in during the 2010-11 school year and will increase student fees $1,344 dollars per undergraduate. When all is said and done, student fees will be raised to $10,302 dollars, a 32.5 percent increase from current fees.

According to the regents, 33 percent of the revenue generated by both fee increases will go to financial aid.

“The result of budget cuts [from the state of California] is that we are recommending a mid-year fee increase,” said Patrick Lenz Vice President for budget, in a presentation to the regents.

The State of California, experiencing its worst fiscal crisis in years, ­­cut $637.1 million in allocations to the UC, leaving it with $2.6 billion for the 2009-10 fiscal year, twenty percent less of what it used to receive in state funding.

In a speech addressed to a regent, UC President Yudof said, “ I think we are doing it in a way that makes sense… it will end the furlough plan and extend library hours.”

Without the fee increases the UC will fall short $792 million dollars in its budget.

Along with the fee increase, the regents will request that the California state legislature provide UC with $913 million dollars for the next fiscal year. Even if the  state legislature responds positively to this request UC, will still face a $144 million dollar gap.

“We have to fix this,” said John Plotts, the Assistant Vice President of Finance. “Or we have no future.”

Illustration by Kenneth Srivijittakar.

Next week, the future of UC students, faculty and workers could all change. The UC Regents will meet Nov. 17 to Nov. 20 at UCLA to vote on raising student fees by 30 percent.

This is after voting last summer to raise student fees by 9 percent. This is after implemented furlough days for UC faculty and staff, where they are required to take unpaid days off. This is after UCs experienced cuts to programs and classes, where students and workers all have to do and pay more, only to receive less education, services and compensation.

The Student-Worker Action Team at UC Berkeley called for a UC-wide student and teaching strike beginning Nov. 18, the second day of the regents meeting. The major demand is that the UC Regents vote no on the proposed fee increases. They also call for a stop to cuts and layoffs to UC workers. They want to continue the strike if the regents vote to pass the fee increases and continue with the furlough program.

“But to the extent that we call for an event with a predetermined end-date, we risk a purely symbolic action,” they wrote. “Walkouts, strikes, library sit-ins: these are powerful because they affect the university materially as well as symbolically.”

On their Web site, students, faculty and staff have signed a petition to pledge their support for the strike. The University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) union, made up of over 11,000 UC employees, also pledged to protest.

UC Santa Cruz students have shown tremendous support, following UC Berkeley in the number of signatures. However, the overall number of signatures at press time was about 1,500, a dismal number compared to the approximately 220,000 students in the entire UC system. Many professors at UC Berkeley and UC Davis have pledged online to cancel courses for the day. On the UCSC Web site, none have done so.

We’ re calling on the UCSC community to pledge and support the strike: it our last chance to show our united dissent, distaste and disdain for the regents’ actions.

In an open letter to UC students, Robert Meister, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, wrote that many people make excuses for not protesting. Maybe it’s because they have classes they don’t want to miss. Maybe it’s because they believe it’s a statewide budget issue and the UC crisis is a reflection of those times. Maybe it’s because this is not the time and place to address these issues.

Meister, who is also a professor of political and social thought at UCSC, gave a simple reply to those concerns. He wrote one “should not conclude that, if a problem exists everywhere, it can’t be confronted anywhere; nor should [one] conclude that if a problem is ongoing, it can’t be addressed now.”

We agree with him when he says the UC has “a large body of students, faculty and staff who are ready to be educated and engaged in action” and that this is the “place and time for us to confront a wider long-term problem.”

UCSC hosts many of these people. The spirit of activism runs deep at our campus. Even if you haven’t participated in a protest before, now is the time — the last chance to walk out and speak up before it gets worse.

Imagine what Nov. 18 could look like: Northern California students rallying at UC Berkeley, Southern Calfornia schools congregating at UCLA to protest the regents meeting. At UCSC, there will be a protest in the Quarry at noon, to be followed by a march down to the base of campus at 2 p.m.

On that day, we could stand by our fellow Slugs, UC students, faculty and workers to show — not just tell — the UC Regents that we want change.

In his infamous quote to the New York Times Magazine, UC President Mark Yudolf caused an uproar when likened his job to being a manager of a cemetery. “There are many people under [me],” he said. “But no one is listening. I listen to them.”

Here’s our chance to rise from the dead. We are no longer dormant. By walking out, we will let Yudolf hear us loud and clear that we do not accept more student fee increases.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

The University of California (UC) Regents will vote Nov. 18 on whether or not to increase undergraduate educational fees by a total of 32 percent, or approximately $2,500, starting next school year. By raising fees, regents and the University Office of the President (UCOP) plan to make up for a loss of state funds.

For UC Santa Cruz students, this partly means paying more to support other UC institutions.

In a student media press conference held on Nov. 2, UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal told student representatives that “the last … six fee increases have generally not gone back to the campus where they’ve been collected.”

Educational fees, or base fees, are priced the same across the UC campuses by the UCOP.

Once collected, one-third of all educational fees are set aside for financial aid and the other two-thirds are used to support the operating budgets of each university. In the end, UCSC only gets back 82 percent of the income that it generates.

The remaining 18 percent is allocated to other UC campuses. The decision on where to allocate that money is made by the UCOP is based on actual enrollment levels.

“I don’t like the idea that students at UC Santa Cruz, by paying increased fees, are in fact supporting other institutions,” Blumenthal said.

Before 2007, only 67 percent of educational fees paid by UCSC undergraduates came back to the university.

That 67 percent increased to 82 percent after Blumenthal became an acting chancellor and was able to negotiate with the UC president.

If regents pass the fee hike next week, UCSC students will pay an estimated total of $10,280 annually in education and campus registration fees. After the funds are distributed, UCSC will lose approximately $1,850 per student, as opposed to the $1,400 lost now.

Out of the 10 schools within the UC system, three receive more money than they generate in educational fees. They are UC Davis, UCLA, and UCSF. Davis and UCLA receive approximately 105 percent and 110 percent respectively, while UCSF ends up with a 459 percent return.

UCSF is renowned for its medical facilities. The university’s medical school is ranked fifth in the nation and its hospital is ranked seventh, according to a 2009 US News and World Report publication. UCD and UCLA also have extensive research programs that are said to require the extra money.

One of the issues surrounding the idea of returning 100 percent of educational fees back to the UCs is that UCSF would no longer have the necessary funding to continue their high caliber research and care. President Yudof echoed this in an October press conference.

“On the one hand, grad and professional education is more expensive, so that’s a reason to claim more [fees],” Yudof said.

Chancellor Blumenthal disagrees, and has championed the idea that the UCs should get back all that they put in the pot.

“They can support themselves,” Blumenthal said. “UCSF gets … far more grant money than we do. They have hospitals, larger infrastructure and many of their faculty gets a significant fraction of their salary from clinical income. They have alternatives that we don’t have. We’re kind of wstuck with … state income.”

A budget process overview by UCSF published during the 2008-09 year said that even in these tough economic times it is important to remain a competitive institution with money to spend.

“Fee increases imposed by the UCOP have made it more cost-effective for many UCSF researchers to hire postdocs in lieu of graduate research assistants,” the overview said.

Both Yudof and Blumenthal agree that the model for how campuses are funded needs to be re-examined.

“It would go a lot better if we have more money,” Yudof said, “but we’re going to look at the formulas.”

~~~~~

For corresponding audio, tune into “On What Grounds?” next Thursday from 7:30 to 8 p.m. on KZSC 88.1 FM

Illustration by Joe Lai.

The UC regents may have reached a new low. Or high, rather.

In the proposed fee increase, set to be discussed at the upcoming Nov. 17 regents’ meeting at UCLA, resident undergraduate fees will more than likely experience another upward jolt, this time including a mid-year fee increase in addition to planned spikes for the 2010-2011 school year.

While it’s fair to say no UC student would happily invite a tuition increase, this merits more than a few grumbles. Resident undergrads can expect to experience a $585 increase mid-year, $633 for nonresident undergrads. Graduate students will be similarly affected. Assuming everything goes according to the regents’ plan, all student fees will exceed $10,000 by Fall 2010. The decision to lay this on us in the middle of November, a mere two months before the mid-year line, shines a light on a bigger, continuous problem with the regents: their relationship to students.

The regents make a big point of talking to the public, hinting at proposals and potential changes through impersonal e-mails and brief open sessions during their meetings. The problem is, there is currently no productive way for us to talk to them.  While we are always welcome to fire off an angry e-mail or elbow our way to the microphone during open sessions, these options represent little more to us than a running wheel to a hamster.  An e-mail is far too easy to ignore, and the typical schedule for regents’ meeting allows them to meet privately regarding each topic prior to opening the floor to the public — and even when the public finally takes to the floor, their time to speak is capped at a disrespectfully brief 20 minutes. Any exclamation of emotion during the open sessions is treated as an unruly interference and the offender, often a union member, teacher or student, is escorted forcefully from the room and barred from reentering.

It would be foolish to believe that what’s said by the attending public has any real effect on the regents’ votes. It’s far more likely that many minds are made up before we can even say a word.

This new fee hike proposal leaves us especially helpless. We’re already in school, close to having a third of this year done, and many of us are well into our long-term academic tracks. Proposing increases for next year is one thing, as it allows us to finish out our year and plan accordingly. But applying these fees mid-year feels like a trap: pay the increase or leave. And unless we want to stunt our well-earned momentum from this quarter, paying more seems to be our only real option.

The severity of this situation highlights the amount of harm the regents have caused to their would-be significant others: the students. Assuming these proposals do pass on Monday, which is practically a given, we will be stuck with a decision we have no venue in which to effectively react. These choices directly influence us and our ability to get a UC-caliber education, and yet reflect nothing of our voice. The reverberations from previous fee hikes have become more apparent, and yet, as we look ahead to further increases, we remain unable to influence regents’ future decisions.

As economy and budget struggles continue to hinder our university, it is imperative that we have more say in what happens to us. At the end of the day this is still our university.  It is an establishment which should be centered around our education and our needs.

No one knows our needs and thoughts better than we do, and until we are given a productive, effective way to express them, no one ever will.