What to Expect from the Next UC Regents' Meeting

If you have not heard already, you must be one of them cool kids anxious to leave the hectic day-to-day battles at your local campus and head for the beach to let loose and drink as much as humanly possible. After all, saying "fuck it, it doesn't concern me" is the most common answer (besides the most ridiculous). Four years later, (perhaps five if you keep partying the way you did your freshman year), you will look back at your bills, and realize that perhaps it did concern you. Maybe it will not really hit you until you graduate and find out there are few jobs out there, and that you, no matter how many good grades, and good contacts you managed to make through your sorority and fraternity friends, are still shit-outta-luck and living with your parents.

If this is a future you want to avoid, perhaps it is time to sacrifice just a little of that "cool time" at the beach and pay attention to what your school is planning to continue the process of screwing you over.

So, what are the Regents' up to this coming meeting at UCSF?

Here are two very important points on the agenda:

(1) First amendment rights on campus and policing. Berkeley Law's Dean Edley will present the results of his "research" into First Amendment rights and probably make recommendations based on consulting a number of "external experts" on campus policing and UC administration response to protest. We will be there to demand an end to the criminalization of protest and the violent/political repression of student activists on our campuses.

(2) A deal Yudof secretly negotiated with Governor Brown to pin a long-term multi-year tuition hike plan to Brown's tax initiative (the same one CFT/ACCE/Courage compromised with Brown on). If the regents vote next week to ratify this deal, it could result in multi-year tuition hikes of anywhere between 15-42% over the next three years. Tying the tuition hikes to Brown's tax initiative would only amount to about $100 million extra revenue for the UC per year (a drop in the bucket compared to the +$1 billion that the state has cut from the UC since 2007). More importantly, written into the deal is a clause saying this extra revenue will go straight into paying off Wall Street investors in UC bonds, instead of into instruction or a tuition hike reversal. Basically, this deal is Yudof and the regents' attempt to write long-term tuition hikes, and the funneling of that tuition revenue to bond-holding Wall Street investors, into law. We will demand an end to undemocratic backroom dealing, as well as for the regents to support the Millionaire's Tax/Refund California pledge, and for the reversal of tuition hikes.

This is your chance to be heard, don't waste it.

If you want to come out and support us, and still have a fun time during Spring Break, be part of the protest. Tell them you do not want them to enrich themselves by stealing your future.

Sign up on Facebook for the alternative Spring Break at UCSF Mission Bay.

Read the full statement from fellow concerned students and faculty regarding the upcoming Regents' Meeting:
Open+Letter+to+Brown+and+Regents+Final.2012.03.23