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About 300 protestors confronted a blockade of police today in an unsuccessful attempt to march on Interstate 80 in Davis, resulting in one student’s arrest.
Tensions erupted when protestors tried to push past shoulder-to-shoulder lines of 120 officers from 10 law enforcement agencies. Laura Mitchell, a senior sociology-organizational studies major, was arrested on suspicion of inciting a riot and resisting arrest and was dragged from the group of protestors into a law enforcement vehicle. Protestors left the scene after police agreed to cite and release Mitchell instead of taking her to jail.
The protest was part of the March 4 Day of Action, a nationwide series of rallies for K-12 and higher education funding.
Officers in full tactical gear fired pepper balls at the ground in front of the protestors. At one point, police used batons to beat back a throng of students pushing forward.
Some police had stun guns, but a UC Davis police spokesperson said they were not used by any officers, despite what many students reported hearing and seeing. A California Aggie photographer captured an image of a California Highway Patrol officer pressing a stun gun to a protestor’s neck. A CHP spokesman told The Aggie that no stun guns were fired.
Protestors encountered three separate lines of police on Old Davis Road and pushed through the first two. At the second line, about 100 yards from the I-80 on-ramp, police began firing pepper balls at the ground. At the last line, Mitchell was arrested and protestors stopped pushing against police.
The day of action began at 11 a.m., when students gathered at the Activities and Recreation Center and began a march around campus. Students marched in protest of fee increases, furloughs, cuts to campus services and the structure of the UC system.
While some students went to the Capitol in Sacramento during this time, many stayed on campus to call awareness to what they believe is a corrupt UC system.
“Even if UC got more funding from the state, they wouldn’t spend it on students,” said Cynthia Degnan, a graduate student in the English department. “They would spend it on privatizing our university.”
Fire alarms were pulled in Storer, Chemistry, Olson, Kerr, Wellman and Hart Halls, as well as at Shields Library, forcing all those inside to evacuate. No suspects have been identified.
“It was a symbolic gesture to show that education cannot continue under these circumstances,” Degan said.
Some students inside the buildings said the false alarms were counterproductive to the message of education.
“It was completely and totally disrespectful that they pulled those alarms,” said Maggie Mello, a senior history major who evacuated Olson Hall. “We pay $100 a day to learn without disruption here, and I have a right to be in class. It was petty and irrational.”
The students marching then moved the MU bus terminal and blocked Unitrans and Yolobus buses in order to communicate the importance of their cause.
“Business cannot go on as usual,” said Sergio Blanco, a senior political science major.
After halting bus services for approximately 30 minutes, the march progressed down Howard Way, stopping at the intersection of Russell Boulevard. Unitrans service was severely affected during this time and after, said Greg Strecker, a third year political science major and Unitrans dispatcher.
“Most of the buses could not get through and ran late,” he said. “I know a lot of people who were late to school. One guy missed his midterm. I agree with a lot of [the protestor’s] ideas, but we are here for an education and we already paid for it.”
Still, those involved were pleased with the way the march was able to rally support and draw attention, said protestor Brian Ramirez-Corona at the intersection of Howard and Russell.
“I’m really proud of our students,” Ramirez-Corona said. “We just got so many people to come out to this intersection, and I think it’s really going to make a statement to the UC regents.”
Students then marched 2.5 miles around the perimeter of central campus to the Interstate 80 on-ramp where the arrest occurred at approximately 2:45 p.m. Sheri Atkinson, director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, arrived after Mitchell’s arrest to negotiate her release and stayed after the protestors left to assist Mitchell.
Protestors then returned to campus and marched throughout the library and other lecture halls, where more alarms were pulled. The march moved to the intersection of Anderson and Russell, where approximately 100 students blocked traffic and danced to the beat of drums.
Earlier this morning at UC Berkeley, 100 protestors held a peaceful rally at Sather Gate. Another rally on Sproul Plaza was held at noon.
Approximately 1,000 protestors – along with high school students – marched south for six miles to rally at Oakland City Hall. The march proceeded south to rally in Oakland and later seven blocks were occupied. At 3 p.m., 1,500 people filled Frank Ogawa Plaza.
About 120 protestors were arrested for blocking traffic on Interstate 880 during rush hour, just before 5 p.m. Although police reopened lanes at 5:30 p.m., traffic was already backed up for miles in all directions.
One protestor either fell or jumped from the freeway onto a tree and roadway about 25 feet below. Paramedics took the protestor away.
For more information on today’s march in Davis, read Monday’s Aggie.
JEREMY OGUL contributed to reporting. LAUREN STEUSSY can be reached at campus@theaggie.org. POOJA KUMAR can be reached at city@theaggie.org.
UPDATE – March 5, 2010: CHP has confirmed they did not fire any stun guns. Laura Mitchell is a sociology-organizational studies major. Cynthia Degnan’s name was misspelled in the original version of this article.
I agree completely with RealityCheck. The problem isn’t the regents, Yudof, or even Schwarzenegger; the very structure of our state government enforces poor governance. The protesters would do a lot more for the cause of education if they educated themselves, their friends and their families about how our politicians get elected and the constraints they must work within once they are elected, and the need to find an alternative.
Senior political science majors should be coming up with smart ways to change our constitution, not march in the mindless pursuit of “disruption.”
It’s quite obvious that we, as a society, benefit by making education free to those who prove their merit. This was the foundation of the Master Plan for Education, and the reasoning is as true today as it was then. If you restrict education to those who can pay, you end up with a school overrun with the vapid children of rich donors. Recall, if you will, that George W. Bush has a Yale degree. Additionally, if education is only available to those who can pay and pay and pay, the best and brightest are kept outside of the system, and their talents will be squandered.
By opening education up to the best and the brightest, regardless of their class background, California ended up with UC Berkeley, Silicon Valley, and Google, amongst other benefits. Paying for the educations of the best students is an excellent investment of the state’s resources.
In other words, I don’t buy into the narrative that this is all about the rich trying to make themselves richer and keeping the poor and marginalized down. This is about California’s fatally flawed system of governance. But of course, that’s not as sexy as class conflict, and it doesn’t make for good social revolution slogans.
Cynthia, thanks for responding. I understand the activist definition of privatization. But the state is forcing the university’s hand. If the state reduces funding by about a billion dollars in two years, how can the university respond to that without raising fees and seeking more research funding from private businesses? Maybe there are some overpaid people at the top, but there’s not a billion dollars worth of overpaid administrators. This is a problem of GOVERNANCE in the State of California — we have a system that allows uninformed voters and corrupt politicians to make poor decisions about how the state’s money is brought in and spent. And we have a constitution that makes it extremely difficult for us to fix the mess we’re in. People need to stop blaming the Regents, who have very limited realistic options, and start looking at what we can do to make sure our priorities are reflected in what the state spends its money on (i.e. schools not prisons).
The protest is retarded.
No one says you have to go to a UC. If you can’t afford it then go to a city college or a CSU. If you aren’t willing to pay for your education then leave.
Like someone mentioned, your protesting against the university which has absolutely no control over the fee increases. If you want to protest, sack up and go protest at the capital. Clearly you guys don’t have the balls to make a “real” difference, so instead you ruin people trying to learn in lecture, prevent people from getting to school, and waste even more state money by requiring hundreds of police to watch over you guys.
Against Yudof, yeah he makes a ton of money. But if you took away his entire salary, that’ll do what, lower every UC student’s tuition by 2 dollars? Woww…you guys have done so much.
This is my university too and I hate you guys
legalize drugs. use the money from the war on drugs to fund education as well as taxes from the sale of drugs to fund education. release non-violent drug offenders thereby saving money from the prison system. have the us military pull out of south korea, japan, germany, italy, guantanamo bay, yemen, stop funding israel’s war against the Palestinians, pull out US spy planes currently using the netherlands island in the carribean to fly over cuba and venezuela, US government out of afghanistan and iraq NOW!! rather than telling the poor to join ROTC and JROTC, give more scholarships towards a non-military education, legalize prostitution and gain revenue through taxes. don’t pay millions of dollars to the ucb football coach. don’t talk about cutting funds to education while at the same meeting raising the salary at the top. try to think of more!!
Hypothetical scenario for the protestors: After hearing your protest, the State of California decides to make all public education, from K-12 to university, completely free for every student. They will admit every student who applies to any public school. They will fully fund all teachers, professors, research projects, everything. But they will only do this if you can come up with feasible solutions to pay for it. So do you do it? How do you propose to pay for either completely free or low cost public education?
“stop privatizing the university?” I feel that the term “privatize” is being misused by the protesters. If they are using “privatize” to describe rising tuition, then a better term would be inefficiency within the system. A lot of private schools in this country aren’t having to raise their tuition by astronomical amounts, whereas the state-funded institutions are. The UC system is run by public-bureaucrats. No wonder why the private shools avoid many of the problems we face! Privatize the UC!
just to clarify – the beef corporation was a significant donor to the school and threatened to withdraw donations if the professor was not fired, leaving the school that depended on that donation in a very difficult position.
@ “Reality Check”: That was me being quoted. That’s not precisely what I said, I said that I didn’t *believe* that the university would spend the money on students b/c they’ve made no verbal commitment to do so by, for example, promising to role back fee increases or reduce classroom sizes with extra state money. Very different, I think, from claiming to know what would actually happen, which I would never do.
However, it seems like maybe you don’t know what privatization means and I wanted to explain. Privatization is the process of turning a public resource or institution, that is one funded by the state and provided for the state’s residents, into one that is funded very differently and therefore has a very different purpose. The UCs have been doing this for years by growing their revenue-generating units like student housing, by moving the burden of paying from the UCs from the state to individual students, and by relying more heavily on corporate and individual donors (which has significant results, for example, in one csu, where similar things are happening, a corporation that produced beef forced the firing of a professor who criticized the beef industry. Corporations dictating research and teaching is a scary scary thing). the process of privatization makes a lot of people who are already rich even richer and passes the burden of paying for this onto college students and families who largely cannot afford to pay. So I don’t believe that UCOP and other University administrators have any motive for changing this trend. It’s making the uber-rich (Mark Yudof, the president of the University, makes $800K/year – which includes his $10,000/month that your tuition pays for. Two months of rent is more than grad student TAs make in a year) richer and leaving actual education by the wayside, reducing the value of the degree that you are all getting in the process, making your earning prospects after graduation much less bright than they were when you started here. That is what privatization does. That’s why we’re fighting it. The state needs to fund education, but the administration needs to assure us that this funding will actually be used to educate and not to consolidate wealth onto fewer and fewer individuals.