Criminal Justice University

Students at UC Santa Cruz have been occupying the administration building (Kerr Hall) at the school for the past three days. According to several of the the students (over 370 are involved in the protest) there is no way they are going to give up leading many to suspect that the police will soon begin forcibly removing them.  This all started after the regents board at the school approved a 32 % increase in tuition. The students are concerned that they simply won’t be able to afford going to school there any longer as that is a very large increase for them to absorb.  The school says they have no plans to negotiate with the students and have already warned them that they will have the police come and clear the students out if they don’t leave on their own.  The students expect that will happen very soon. Actually, this protest is one of several demonstrations going on in California universities this past week. On Friday night, 41 protesters occupying a building at UC Berkley were arrested and cited for trespassing (and quickly released).  On Thursday, 52 students were arrested at UC Davis after they refused to leave the school’s administration building where they were also protesting tuition increases.  UCLA’s Campbell Hall was also occupied for several hours this past Thursday by protesting students.  The tuition hikes will start in January when they rates will go up 15% which is more than double the average public tuition hike last year. On average, tuition and fees at the nation’s universities increased by 6.5%.  An interesting note is that students that qualify for financial aid that have families making less than $70,000 per year will have their tuition covered.  Which makes me wonder if the reason why the tuition increases are happening isn’t really being totally driven by the fact that they can charge more and have Federal grants and funding cover the costs for a majority of the students.  The schools adamantly reject that stating that they are being forced to raise the tuition to keep the university open.  In any event, it will be very interesting to follow these protests over the next couple of weeks.

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