Tuition hikes protested

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UC Davis students protest tuition hikes in Sacramento, Calif.

Students across the country are protesting the cuts in education spending that has caused their tuition fees to rise. In New York, last spring, angry students took over the City College system (CUNY) to protest fee hikes. Now the protest has spread to California.

Hundreds of students at the University of California at Davis occupied the school auditorium last month after the regents of the university system, meeting on the campus, voted to raise fees 22 percent. The students held up signs that were directly to the point: "Education is a right, not a privilege."

Several days later, on Jan. 21, over 350 students rallied on the steps of the state capitol in Sacramento.

The University of California (UC) system has raised student fees 60 percent in the last two years. At the same time, 3700 employees' jobs have been eliminated. Salaries were frozen this year—with the exception of UC President Gardner and his chancellors, who will be receiving a 25 percent salary increase.

The fees are also going up in the California State University system (which is separate from the UC system). I am a student at San Francisco State University. When I started in the fall of 1992, the tuition was $435. Since that time, the tuition went up every semester, to $528 this semester. And now the CSU board of trustees has approved a 40 percent fee increase for the fall of 1992.

The hike in fees in the CSU ? SOCIALISTACT system is accompanied with severe class cuts and cutbacks in staff. The CSU system has cut 4000 courses and thousands of faculty members, making it impossible for many students to DN FEBRUARY 19 enroll in the classes they need.

This spring, SFSU used touchtone registration (registration through a computer by telephone) to help ease the pain of students trying to register for classes. But Andy Staff, a senior at SFSU, told me: "Two of the classes I needed were already closed when I tried to register for them. When there aren't enough classes, a new system won't make getting into those classes any easier."

The dream of a tuition-free education envisioned by California's leaders 30 years ago is looking more and more impossible.

Carol Bringanje, a full-time SFSU student and the mother of a seven-year-old son, is expecting a hard year ahead. "I guess I'll have to apply for more financial aid," she said. "I'm going to try to work 30 hours instead of 20 hours. I'll probably have to take an extra semester to graduate now.

And Kevin Paul, a junior at SFSU told me: 'It has taken me seven years to get this far. It's the Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER, JOSEPH RYAN Business Manager: BARRY SHEPPARD Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

San Francisco, CA 94110.

$30. (Money orders, checks should be in U.S. dollars.)

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views expressed in editorials. high cost of living that gets me. I have to work so much to pay my rent, it's difficult to work your way through school.

Unfortunately, higher education is a right that the ruling rich have not granted us in this country. It is a privilege for those who can afford the high cost of tuition at private universities, as well as for those who can afford not to work while trying to further their education. For those of us without that privilege, it is a constant struggle to find classes that do not conflict with our work schedules—as well as to keep up with tuition hikes and the high cost of text books.

Working-class students need to demand our right to an education, and—as the students and UC Davis and CUNY have shown— we are beginning to do so.

Closing date:

Jan. 29, 1992

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