This week the Regents are meeting in San Diego to discuss the financial matters regarding the future of the UC System.

The University of California prides itself on diversity, but its 10 campuses have been reminded that there’s still work to do.

In response to recent racially charged parties at UCSD and UCSB, UCSC campus rallies to show solidarity in support for ethnic equality throughout the UC system.

We face extinction.

The ‘we’ I speak of can be any number of groups since UC Santa Cruz students (and really, just about everyone else) are now at the center of a constantly changing cultural, political and financial landscape.

But our university, our community, our microcosm of the real world that awaits our uneasy arrival, is facing extinction.

And when extinction becomes a possibility, the masses turn.

Twelve hours after leaving UC Santa Cruz, the caravan of student government officers and interns prepared to leave Sacramento behind. Hundreds of UC, CSU, and California Community College system (CCC) students filed out of the Capitol Building, clinging to the hope that legislators might heed their testimonies. “What is at stake here,” UCSC Student Union Assembly (SUA) external vice chair Victor Sanchez said to the budget committee, “is more than the future of our system of higher education, but that of the state of California.”

The recent outbreak of swine flu has our Board of Regents scared. In these times of fear we see people act irrationally. From airplanes landing prematurely to the UC Board of Regents canceling their annual meeting, the H1N1 virus has many on edge.