Monday, November 23, 2009

California Tuition Hikes Spark Protests

By Peter Phillips
November 23, 2009

Police are arresting and attacking student protesters on University of California (UC) campuses again.

Read on.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait till Obama's health care bill gets past, the whole country will be protesting in the streets.

Nat Parry said...

"The reality is that there is virtually no segment of American society that is not straining with the economic recession," says the San Diego Union Tribune. "With UC facing a $535 million budget gap due to state cuts, the regents have to confront reality and make tough choices. So should students."

Is this newspaper implying that the students are a bunch of ingrates because they choose to protest for their right to an education rather than take a third job or drop out of school? Perhaps the tough choice that they ought to make is to take one more loan, or to apply for another credit card so they can pay for their books, which are marked up a couple hundred percent by monopolistic, price-fixing university publishers and book stores.

It is easy for the regents to make "tough choices", perhaps not as easy for the students. For the regents, the choice is to either hike up tuition rates or not; for the students, the choices are either more debt or dropping out of school. Either way, they are fucked, especially in this economy. They are absolutely right to be resisting this tuition hike by any means necessary.

Hopefully their example will spread...

Anonymous said...

The only thing lacking from this spot-on analysis is to note that the transfer of wealth from the middle classes upward and the malign neglect of public services over the last generation were only made possible by the popular election of conservative public officials. I.e., The people assented to and endorsed their own gradual impoverishment.