Just home from a day of meetings and talking to students about papers, Latin, and other matters. I opened my email and read the following (email at 17h35):

An open letter to the UCSC community:

Today the UC Regents voted to increase student tuition by 32 percent. Over the past six months, tuition has increased almost 40 percent, pricing more and more students out of the UC system–which was once free for California residents. This increase is linked to a state-level de-prioritization of education. Today, California spends three times as much per prison inmate as it does per student in higher education.

Across the state, students are taking action to demonstrate our unwillingness to accept this state of affairs. The administration expected us to protest today, to ‘blow off steam’. But they think that, when all is said and done, we will quietly accept this massive fee increase. We will prove them wrong by taking back what is rightfully ours.

Today at UCLA, where the Regents held their meeting, thousands took to the streets. A group of students occupied Campbell Hall. At UC Davis, students are currently occupying an administrative building. And here at UCSC, several hundred students are occupying Kerr Hall, the building that houses top-level administrators. They are preparing a list of demands and refuse to leave until they have been met.

This action is part of a growing student movement across California and in Europe. At this very moment, hundreds of thousands of students all over the world are taking action to challenge both the privatization of education and, more generally, the implementation of policies that force students and workers to bear the burden of economic crisis. These tactics have worked in the past, and they will work now.

Students at Kerr Hall need your support immediately. We call on all students, workers, and community members to come join us. We have the power to change the university.

See some pictures and list of demands on Santa Cruz Indymedia. I repeat here what I just sent students in two classes a little while ago: I’m dismayed but not surprised by the decision the Regents took, down the political tree, to increase fees so massively, and in such a devastating way. Now we need all the courage, hope, wisdom, and—allow me even to use this old-fashioned word—the love of others we can muster (both ways) in thinking through what is going on and acting in the best way we can, no matter how grim things may look further down the road. We cannot wait for others to do it for us.