Occupy UC Davis sets up encampment on Quad

Inside one of 30 or so tents set up along the Centennial Walkway dividing the UC Davis Quad, Soo Lee checked Facebook on her laptop.

Elsewhere in the hours-old Occupy UC Davis encampment early Thursday evening, someone strummed a guitar and a handful of about 50 protesters sang along to The Beatles’ “Revolution” and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

A larger banner reading “Defend public education” hung from a tree. A cheer went up when news came that the Quad’s sprinkler system wouldn’t be turned on. Someone brought pizza.

Across the Quad, four police officers leaned on a cruiser.

Police earlier warned students that camping overnight is prohibited. As of early this morning, however, no arrests had been made or further steps taken to break up the encampment.

Lee, a junior statistics major, said she was taking part because of her opposition to a proposal to further hike tuition.

Her sister, Helen, attends UC San Diego, but the Lees, natives of Korea, don’t qualify for financial aid. Their mother keeps her daughters in school by flipping burgers 12 to 13 hours a day in a Riverside fast-food restaurant.

“I’m standing up for myself and for future generations,” Lee said. “I am speaking up for other people and their younger brothers and sisters.”

Another protester, Enosh Baker, a 2007 UCD graduate turned co-op business development consultant, said that, in Davis,  just as in New York and elsewhere, the reasons people have joined the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street movement were many.

Among them are income inequality, corporate greed and both the tuition hikes and recent police violence at UC Berkeley, where police cleared an encampment early Thursday.

“As a critical thinker, I feel like my biggest protest is protesting this idea that you can compact a world of grievances into like a five-second sound bite. The whole point is that there are so many. That’s what’s bringing people together, and that’s why this whole thing is so beautiful — it’s completely nonpartisan,” Baker said.

“Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!” protesters chanted at midday outside the U.S. Bank branch, where a lone security guard stood inside closed doors.

Between 150 and 175 protesters, most of them students, also marched through at least one academic building, Wellman Hall.

“Education is not a capitalist venture,” read one cardboard sign.

Standing outside the bank at the Memorial Union, one protester said that while the debt of students paying higher and higher tuition piles up, banks are making record profits “on the backs of us, our friends and our families.”

Outside, another read a letter to the UC Board of Regents about Article IX of the California Constitution. It begins, “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people.”

The regents are failing to fulfill that promise, she said. They should be promoting an “intellectual burgeoning, not financial despair.”

“We are here to reclaim the reins,” she said.

One  protester also took issue with UCD’s description of how a remaining group of 18 protesters left the administration building, Mrak Hall, on Wednesday, after about 50 spent night in the lobby.

Police intimidated the protesters, he said. Fourteen officers were on hand.

Spokesperson Claudia Morain said protesters agreed to leave when UCD closed the building at 2:30 p.m., citing liability concerns and staffing limitations. It remained locked on Thursday.

State general funds to the UC and California State University have been slashed about 25 percent since the start of the recession. Tuition increases have been used to cover much of that loss.

At $12,191, UC tuition this fall stands 18 percent higher than a year ago and double what it was in 2003-04.

U.S. Bank signed a 10-year deal with UCD in 2009 that campus officials said would bring in $3 million for student services. A committee with a student majority is to decide how funds are used.

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8046. Follow him on Twitter at @cory_golden

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=106676

Posted by Cory Golden on Nov 18 2011.
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