A new wave of campus activism is on the rise, propelled by draconian state budget cuts. Since summer, students, staff and faculty have come together to defend public higher education, in the process forging promising new coalitions across traditional divides.

Especially in the University of California and California State University systems, organizing has centered on broad demands, such as fighting student fee increases, layoffs and furloughs, pay cuts, and privatization of public education.

UC rocked

In July, UC Regents granted emergency financial powers to UC President Mark Yudof, who issued orders for furloughs, and over the objections of the Academic Senates on all ten campuses, mandated that they take place on non-instructional days. Senate faculty, invoking shared governance, declared that some of the furloughs must occur on instructional days so that students and the public would understand the impact of the cuts. When the Regents and Yudof refused, faculty from each campus, in an open letter, called for a walkout and day of action.

According to Mike Rotkin, longtime lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and UC-AFT vice-president, “I haven’t seen senate faculty so angry and politically active since the Vietnam War.”

On September 24, members of the University Professionals and Technical Employees, CWA, walked off their job at each UC campus and were joined on picket lines by members of other UC unions, senate and non-senate faculty, and students.

Throughout the day, across the state, faculty, staff and students organized teach-ins about UC finances, the state budget and how it works, protecting the "public" in public education, and many more topics related to education, politics, economics and society.

Levels of involvement varied from relatively limited walkouts to complete disruption of business as usual in Santa Cruz and Berkeley. The largest gatherings of the day were the noon rallies. Five hundred showed up to the Santa Cruz event, and a like number in Riverside and Irvine.  San Diego had over a thousand participants, UCLA seven hundred. At least five thousand filled historic Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, prompting many speakers to compare the import of the day's events with the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. The rally then transformed itself into a massive impromptu march through downtown Berkeley, where chants of “Whose university? Our university!” ricocheted against the office buildings.

Inability to prioritize
CFT sent representatives from K-12 and community college locals to most of the rallies to speak. A dozen CFT locals distributed blue AFT t-shirts to their members along with flyers asking the membership to wear them on September 24 for two reasons: to protest and publicize cuts to K-14 education, and to stand in solidarity with their UC brothers and sisters.

CFT President Marty Hittelman told the crowd at the UCLA rally, “UC administrators and the governor share an inability to prioritize students.  A quality education for all should come before tax loopholes for the rich and corporations, and student access to education should come before enormous salaries for administrators.”

Oil severance tax

Two weeks later, during the week of October 12, the California Faculty Association organized rallies at CSU campuses. CFT sent K-12 and community college speakers to the CSU rallies as well. The union for CSU faculty had a sharply focused agenda in these events, bringing Assemblymember Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont) to keynote several of the gatherings and highlight his bill, AB 656, which would dedicate revenue from an oil severance tax to California higher education. AB 656 would bring an estimated $100 million per year to the community colleges, and split the rest of its revenue (based on a 9.9% tax) between UC and CSU, for a total of about $1 billion per year. California is the only state among twenty-one oil-producing states without an oil severance tax.

Throughout the state and in UC and CSU events alike, remarkably consistent messages have been emerging, including vows of cooperation between K-12 and higher education advocates, broadening the field of struggle to defend all vital public services, and most importantly, a growing awareness of the root of the problems in the state’s dysfunctional legislative rules and inequities in a tax system that redistributes wealth to the already wealthy while starving public education and services.

The spirit of the events and determination to fight did not end with the September and October actions. Ad hoc groupings and other more formal structures are continuing to coalesce and grow and plan at the time of this writing, often with a strong direct action orientation. Students “liberated” the Anthropology Library at UC Berkeley over the October 9 weekend for a teach-in, keeping it open despite UC administration decisions to close it each Friday at 5 pm. On October 24, hundreds of education activists in northern California will converge on UC Berkeley, answering the call of a student based General Assembly to deliberate the next steps in defending public education at all levels.

Click here for more information on organizing within the UC system.