Protesters have big plans to demonstrate at four UC campuses across the state today when the UC Board of Regents holds a teleconference to discuss a new tuition plan, as well as the recent incident where a UC Davis cop callously doused protesters with pepper spray.
Last week's Regents meeting, scheduled in San Francisco, was abruptly cancelled after police got word of "rogue elements" that could disrupt the meeting and create violence. But today, the board is hoping a teleconference meeting will diffuse potential chaos and allow them to decide whether or not the UC system should ask the state for more money to avoid raising student tuition -- again.
The ongoing budget cuts and tuition hikes goes right to the heart of what anti-Wall Street protesters are fumed about: Why are already high-paid UC executives getting richer while students are getting screwed with more fees?
Charlie Eaton, a UC Berkeley graduate student and organizer of the ReFund California campaign, explains to the Mercury News
today that protesters want to open the teleconference to the 99
percent and "insist that our voices be heard as equals to the
millionaires and bankers on the Board of Regents."
"We've got to have a conversation about how do we make millionaires and the banks pay for public higher education in California," Eaton said.
Students are also angry over the recent crackdown of Occupy camps on college campuses, particularly the recent chaos at Berkeley and the pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis two weeks ago.
Today, UC Davis students and faculty members are planning a strike of their own to draw even more attention to the UC Davis cop who was seen teargassing peaceful protesters as the participated in a sit-in on campus two weeks ago. Those images circulated the Internet, making the university look almost as bad as Oakland did with its irrational handling of Occupy protesters.
Two officers and the UC Davis police chief have since been suspended over the incident, which will be discussed at today's Board of Regents meeting.
"People are appalled and rightly so," UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein told reporters. "Something, somewhere broke down, and we need to figure out why and to make sure it won't happen again."
Watch Anonymous' video to Lt. John Pike, the cop who allegedly tear gassed the students.
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