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  3. Thousands of students, faculty and staff boycotted classes and staged rallies across the 10-campus University of California (UC)

Thousands of students, faculty and staff boycotted classes and staged rallies across the 10-campus University of California (UC)

admin2021-09-17  54
问题     Thousands of students, faculty and staff boycotted classes and staged rallies across the 10-campus University of California (UC) on Thursday to protest dramatic cuts to the system’s budget and proposed additional hikes in undergraduate fees.
    The authorities of the University of California, stung by a 20% cutback in state support due to the state budget crisis, are planning to increase student fees another 32%. The University of California system must chop $637 million out of its budget this year following the agreement between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the legislature on how to close California’s massive $26 billion gap in July. Many of the protesters believe the constant increase in fees over the past decade is endangering the university’s mission as a public university that offers students an outstanding education at a cost that middle- and working-class families can afford.
    "It’s not just an economic crisis," says Shannon Steen, a UC Berkeley professor who helped form Save the University to protest cuts to the budget, "it’s really a political crisis around the two-thirds rule in the legislature that holds the state hostage to a minority of legislators who are not doing what the people of California want." California is the only state in the nation that has a two-thirds requirement for the passage of tax increases and to pass a budget. These two rules are at the root of the state’s chronic budget grief.
    UC Irvine Anthropology Professor Victoria Bernal spoke passionately to about 125 students in the Social Science Hall saying "the beauty of the University of California is that it is an elite intellectual institution, but it is not elitist. If there were huge problems with the University of California, that would be one thing. Instead, we are taking something that by all measures is a great success and tearing it down." Student leader Isaac Miller says the university community came together to "protest the de-funding of public education by the State of California and the crisis of priorities of the university administration." "It was stunning," says Steen. "In the 20 years since I was an undergraduate here, I have never seen anything like this."
    The demonstrations did not disrupt schoolwork. A spokesman for University of California President Mark Yudof said most classes were held and that "most of the action was at the rallies." But there will be more rallies. Protest organizers at Berkeley said that discussions are under way for a march on Sacramento that would include participants from the UCs, the 23-campus California State University system and the states’ junior colleges. "This is just the beginning," says Miller. "It’s a wake up call to students about what is happening to their education."
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