UCD protesters occupy Dutton Hall
Occupy UC Davis protesters frustrated over university tuition and fee hikes took their anger Monday to Dutton Hall, the home of UCD’s financial aid services.
The building’s subsequent occupation aimed to show solidarity with UC Santa Cruz, where protesters had taken over the financial aid office earlier in the day.
“Occupy, decolonize. No cuts, no lies,” a group of about 300 people chanted as they marched east to the hall from the campus Quad. Within minutes, they had filled the halls and stairwell of the three-story building.
“It feels good to be taking some action,” said Erica Rettig, a graduate student in ecology at UCD. “I’ve seen people coming out of their offices to see what’s going on.”
The takeover took place shortly before 1 p.m., following a debate among Occupy UC Davis members as to whether protesters should march into classrooms to promote their cause. While some professors had canceled classes in support of a general strike, others had not.
“Students should be here,” one woman said during a general assembly attended by several hundred people on the Quad, which has doubled as headquarters for Occupy UC Davis. “If you crossed into a classroom, you are crossing a picket line.”
Some protesters agreed, while others said students’ choices to attend classes should be respected.
“We don’t have the right to go and affect their grades or their midterms,” said one man.
The group settled on marching to Dutton Hall after another man announced that morning’s actions at UC Santa Cruz.
“We’ve shut it down before with fewer people, and we can shut it down again today,” he said.
“Let’s march!” someone else declared. Soon, a banner declaring “general strike — no more fee hikes” hung over the building’s main entrance, and the first of several teach-ins was under way.
There was no sign of any police action, other than occasional patrols by a lone bike officer.
The number of occupiers ebbed, then grew again as the day wore on. Roughly 50 protesters who attended a general assembly inside the building that evening voted to continue occupying the hall for two weeks.
While the financial aid offices shut down early Monday, other departments in Dutton Hall remained open for business.
They included the Student Academic Success Center, where workers said they have seen similar marches in years past and sympathize with the students’ concerns.
Ellen Abrams, a principal learning skills counselor, said when she was a graduate student at UCLA years ago, students could pay for a year’s worth of tuition and books on their earnings from a summer job.
“That’s not possible now,” Abrams said. “It’s effectively moving in the direction of cutting out the middle-class and low-income students.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8048. Follow her on Twitter @laurenkeene
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=110452
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Posted by Lauren Keene
on Nov 28 2011.
Last Login: Mon 21 May 2012 04:26:23 PM PDT
Filed under Crime, Fire + Courts, UC Davis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
This is truly deplorable. Interfering with other students who WANT to go to classes is inexcusable and is criminal. I can read from this piece if some students and faculty were actually blocked from attending classes, but if they were, I see no problem having those protesters removed by force, if necessary, using pepper spray.
correction I: can read from this –> I can’t read from this
HY – so does your definition of “interfering” with students who want to learn include the regents raising fees so high that some unfortunate students can’t afford to stay in school to learn? I’m not saying I totally agree with preventing students from attending classes, but what is effectively happening is that the financially well-off students don’t care about fee increases and want to go to class, whereas the poor students realize their only chance to remain in school is to fight the fee increases. What would you do in their situation?
You really think all the students who went to class today is so well-off that they don’t care how much tuition is raised? Of course not. Because if that is true, there certainly doesn’t seem to be any tuition problem since I saw as many if not more students today in my classes than any other.
If you want to be taken seriously, you respect others rights even if it doesn’t please you. I express my disgust with the ill-guided strike but I don’t twist the students arms to drag them to their classes. I have no problem with the students fighting the fee increases but I do not condone preventing others from pursuing their education while doing so.
To other commenters:
The occupy movement decided on consensus that they should respect peoples grades, and desires to learn, and marched to Dutton Hall instead. The movement does not force people to participate, or condone learning. Just for clarification.
Thanks for the clarification. I now understand what happened, although I don’t think interfering with your fellow students who needed to do their business at Dutton Hall is a good idea at all.
The Occupy Wall Street protestors just want our economic system FIXED — if anyone reading this is interested in hearing about my solution for the Banking System, please read my website: wwwTheBankingSolution.com — 30 years ago I lived in Davis and I worked at the Davis BofA, and in 1981 the Davis Enterprise newspaper ran my Op-Ed article about my 100% benign Banking Solution!!! You can see the article on my webpage — folks, this is SERIOUS — please look at my website!!!
My understanding one of the demands of the occupation of Dutton is the resignation of the Chancellor so as to begin to reestablish the principle of accountability within UC. If so, they should be strongly supported in this endeavor.