Santa Cruz students protesting cutbacks are attacked by police

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Regents meeting in San Francisco on But this only added fuel to the fire- to go to school fulltime. They are not against the 12 students who were arrested. Nov. 19. Tobin Fried, a UC Santa Cruz hundreds more students joined a protest consulted before the axe falls on student Their other demands are aimed at involvsenior who is president of the UC Stu- rally the next day. programs they need to graduate. They ing students in decision-making and dent Association, said: To believe any One of the organizers of the sit-in said have been driven to sit-ins and other keeping important programs that are student attending UC will be able to that the students were shocked by the forms of protest because the only being cut. come up with these additional fees is appearance of police in riot gear, who response to their demands for no more For example, there are plans to move gave no indication that they would use cutbacks is more cutbacks.

In the meantime, a Santa Cruz student anti-riot tactics to remove the protesters. On Nov, 11, UC Santa Cruz officials care Department, which the students group called Concerned Students, which Students video-taped the police wading beld a "General Forum" to present their believe trivializes its importance. The just formed this quarter, has been leading into the crowd and using clubs and mace reasoning behind the budget cuts. Pre- student demands also champion programs a campus protest against budget cuts to disperse them. This video was shown dictably, they did not allow for any affecting minority students, such as the next day to an angry overflow audi- dialogue with students. According to "Spanish for Spanish Speakers" and other On Nov. 10, hundreds of students took ence in the McHenry Library on campus. Concerned Students leader Steve Hodges, programs that increase diversity. part in a sit-in outside the chancellor's Police authorities tried to justify their 30 to 50 students showed up and refuted Hodges gave a striking statistic that office, which led to negotiations between extreme use of force by citing the level of the administration's rationalizations. students and university officials over a anger of the protesters—as if the anger The next day, Hodges told Socialist African American population at UC list of student demands. That evening, were not justified. Because of fee increas- Action, a secret press conference was Santa Cruz stood at 3.1 percent last year police viciously attacked the students es, education is more and more called by the administration so they could but dwindled to 1.9 percent in 1992. One who did not immediately respond to unaffordable for the majority. give out their version of the cutbacks of the key demands is for programs that orders to leave the area. Twelve students Many students are forced to extend their with no student participation whatsoever. will increase diversity through recruitcollege years because they cannot afford Campus radio station KZSC and City on ment and retention of minority students.

SOCIALISTACTION DECEMBER 1992 3 Students in the University of California (UC) system have been hit with a double whammy-a steep hike in fees and cutbacks in educational programs. But students on the UC Santa Cruz campus are fighting back.

A committee of the University of Califomia Board of Regents is recommending a $605 hike in student fees. The 20 percent increase would mean that student fees in 1993 would be more than double those for the 1990-91 school year. And it follows increases of 24 percent and 40 percent in each of the last two years A delegation of outraged students, mainly from Santa Cruz, attended the both classist and racist."

amounting to $5.4 million. were arrested a hill, the student newspaper, were excluded as well. From outside the press conference, students loudly protested their exclusion Press representatives inside began to question why the students were not permitted to attend. Hodges believes that UC Santa Cruz officials walked out of their own press conference due to the reporters' questions and the ruckus the students were making outside. Sympathetic reporters from the official press conference then began to interview the students.

Concerned Students has a core of 30-40 student leaders ready to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to realize their demands. The students are demanding, first of all, that charges be dropped the Rape Crisis Center into the Healthreflects the effects of cutbacks: The

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MINNEAPOLIS-Since Sept. 25, being Black in this city makes you a murder suspect. Sept. 25 was the day that Minneapolis police officer Jerome Haaf was fatally shot while on a break at the