The UC Board of Regents announced Monday morning its decision to reschedule and possibly relocate the upcoming Board of Regents meeting.
In a press release, the UC Office of the President stated that the decision to postpone the meeting — originally scheduled for this Wednesday and Thursday — was made after the regents received intelligence from police that a threat to student and public safety was imminent.
Meanwhile, hundreds of student protesters have had to change their plans of rallying outside the regents’ meeting. ASUC-funded buses have been rerouted to Sacramento. ASUC External Affairs Vice President Joey Freeman has reached out to UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis to see if they would send buses as well, according to CalSERVE Senator Andrew Albright.
However, the ReFund California Coalition still plans to send their buses from campus to San Francisco’s financial district on Wednesday, according to UC Student Association President Claudia Magana. Demonstrators from the United Auto Workers Local 2865 will march in protest of banks affiliated with regents, said Charlie Eaton, a UC Berkeley graduate student and financial secretary of UAW Local 2865.
In response to the meeting’s postponement, UC Student Regent Alfredo Mireles Jr. shared frustrations with students in a statement in support of student protesters.
“(The students) have this really well organized mobilization, and we have so much passion,” Mireles said. “Frankly, a lot of the frustration and finger-pointing should be at Sacramento. We could have seen history made based on how many students we expected to come to the Regents’ meeting.”
Steve Montiel, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, said that while regents’ meetings have been canceled and postponed in the past, “in recent memory, none have been (rescheduled) for public safety.”
Montiel added that the decision was due solely to safety concerns and not the large volume of protesters expected.
Still, student organizer and UC Berkeley junior Marco Amaral said he doubted the Board of Regents’ justification to cancel the meeting and described the board’s decision as “a chess move.”
“By delaying the meeting all they’re doing is delaying the masses of people that they knew were going to go to the regents’ meeting,” Amaral said. “All they’re going to do is have another regents’ meeting when they know students and workers aren’t organized or won’t have the possibility to get organized.”
The decision to cancel this week’s regents’ meeting only illustrated the regents’ attitude towards the protests that have engulfed the campus, according to Grant Hutchins, a UC Berkeley senior who was present at the Sproul occupation.
“It indicates that the regents are frightened of dealing with students directly,” Hutchins said.
In the past, the goal of protesters has been to prevent the regents’ meetings from convening and making decisions without direct student input, according to UC Berkeley senior Laura Zelko.
However, many student groups, such as the UC Student Association, found the cancellation antagonistic to the protesters’ long-term goals.
“By canceling this meeting, the UC regents have done a great disservice to students and our ability to participate in the governance of our University system,” said UC Student Association President Claudia Magana in a press release.
Sherry Lansing, chair of the board, said she was making it a priority to reschedule the meeting as soon as possible, to a time and place that would ensure access for students and people of the Bay Area.
Despite the setback for the protesters, some expect that the regents’ decision will further galvanize the campus.
“If anything, this might actually stir people up more and turn more people out for the rally tomorrow,” Albright said.
Lansing said whether the meeting should be canceled was debated with police over the weekend up until Monday morning, after starting Friday when police first presented intelligence to the regents.
“We were told outside elements who were not students were coming in to provoke violence and would hurt the students,” she said. “This decision was not because of the student protest — I really want to be clear about that.”
Furthermore, Lansing said that in light of the large turnout expected for the meeting, she had requested an additional public comment section in order to allow more time for protesters and members of the UC community to voice their opinions.
“Peaceful demonstration is something that I respect, and I love the public comment section,” Lansing said. “But if any student ever got hurt, I would never forgive myself for the rest of my life.”
On Tuesday, protesters will hold a general assembly at UC Berkeley where they will discuss establishing an encampment again.
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beautiful gospel singing doesn’t sound to threatening
Photo caption : “You know, my wife doesn’t really understand me.”
“Oh really?…”
The title of this article implies that the Regents and police aren’t lying about the threats of violence and aren’t just making up an excuse to avoid protests, which seems pretty damn likely given their past actions.
Students last year voted for the Lower Sproul Redevelopment, which saddles future Cal classes with huge deficits that must be paid for by student fees:
http://www.dailycal.org/2011/07/10/operating-cost-projections-for-lower-sproul-renovation-show-deficit/
How about repealing the Lower Sproul project? If the buildings are not safe for earthquakes then just shut down the buildings and rent space from other Berkeley buildings.
Yessir! They are scared to death for the future of their 1%’r lifestyle and it is about time they were made to feel the sting of the whip. Revolutions were fought and won with less provocation than these fools have given.
Scare ‘em enough and they WILL scurry away like the little disease-infested rats that they are because, unlike the people, they’ve got no heart no stomach and no balls. It is time for a new leadership and vision at this university and this time starts NOW.
“Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens
Form you battalions
March, march”And in case you didn’t get that far in your education, these are the words of the French national anthem…not EXACTLY a terrorist manifesto.
I think you forgot the part about letting their impure blood water our fields.
[ Revolutions were fought and won with less provocation than these fools have given.]
And replace it with what? Most of the Occupy Whatever protesters seem obsessed with pushing various forms and deriviations of Marxism on us. How well has that worked anywhere else?
@Tony M: you are babbling about things you know nothing about, like Marxism. Go study things before posting gibberish!
What’s the point of demonstrating? The Regents are well aware that students don’t want higher tuition; they also want tuition to be low. The University has made up 25% of the shortfall in State funding with increased tuition; the remaining 75% is coming from reduced administrative budgets. That’s the best they can do. Until the legislature decides to fund higher education, conditions at UC will become worse and worse. There’s no magical solution that occurs when people scream loudly.
It seems like the appropriate place to complain would be Sacramento, since the cutting of State funding seems to be what’s driving the tuition increases.
Another area of concern might be the current spending priorities of the UC system as well as the state of California in general. Many of those students who are protesting have noticeably left-of-center political tendencies, and are often enthusiastic supporters of special admissions for unqualified minorities (I’m referring to AA and racial/ethnic “diversity” admittees here, not those hard-working black and hispanic students who earned the right to attend Cal) and financial aid for illegal aliens, as well as every social spending program promoted by the Democrat Party. The concept that taxpayer dollars are finite, and that such programs compete with their own education for funding, hasn’t seemed to sink in quite yet. The other problem is the duplicity of the UC Regents and administration, who play both sides of the fence with their manipulation of these so-called “student protests”. Even though these protests are ostensibly directed at the Regents, the fact of the matter is that they eventually get spun into blaming the evil nasty taxpayers for “underfunding”, and for a reason. The LAST thing the bureaucrats in the UC system want is a critical examination of their own funding and budgeting priorities, as the waste, fraud, and abuse running rampant in all aspects of education in California (from K-12 to grad school) would lead to another taxpayer revolt…
“waste, fraud, and abuse running rampant”
Bunkum. Senator Yee ranted about this and instigated a State audit of UC’s budgets. It found nothing wrong. UC has cut budgets to the bone and beyond. There’s no way internal changes can compensate for the legislature’s cutting State funding in half.
Bullshit. When the administration has money to fund lawyers to fight Prop 209, there’s clearly no real budget problem, just skewed priorities.
You’ve changed your tune from “waste, fraud, abuse” to “skewed priorities.” How much actual money are you talking about? How does it compare to the billion that Sacramento has pulled back? If the lawyers weren’t paid, how much of the budget crisis would go away?
Using taxpayer-funded money to hire lawyers to fight the will of the taxpayers because it’s your personal agenda is most definitely fraud and abuse. If these liberals have an issue with 209, let them set up a private non-profit groups and fund them out of their own pockets, NOT that of the taxpayers.
Exactly. They should be demonstrating in Sacramento for more funding.
I submit a closer examination of the UC budget, with an eye on various “inclusion” and “diversity” programs geared towards getting illegal aliens and guys who wear dresses into college, might offer some clues into areas where the budget can be further reduced with no harm to any legitimate educational activities…
“where the budget can be further reduced with no harm to any legitimate educational activities”
Numbers please. When UC’s budget shortfall is a billion dollars (with additional mid-year cuts on the way), what percentage of it can be made up by ejecting transvestites?
WTF are you babbling about?
The UC Regents don’t necessarily want tuition to be low. They want whatever the market can bear. Increases in tuition over the last few years have not resulted in decreases in registration — just in changes to the composition of students attending, based on who can afford to pay, and who is eligible for grants. I’d like to believe they want the tuition to be low, but it sounds like they are playing chess with the government, an easy scapegoat.
“They want whatever the market can bear.”
There’s no reason to think this. UC is a non-profit corporation, and Regents receive no compensation. They only raised tuition as a last resort to avert insolvency after the State cut a billion dollars from the budget.
Where the hell did all the comments go!? There were 60 comments here before! Yes, trolls, but others having reasonable discussions!
FWIW, the Daily Crapsheet has a bad habit of having multiple nearly-identical articles on the same subject. Check around and see if there isn’t another article with all the posts you saw earlier…
Here….
http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/14/uc-board-of-regents-cancels-upcoming-meeting/