Five Minutes With... John Garamendi
Lieutenant Governor to UC Students: ‘Demand Change’

A day before he came to campus for the weekend football game, California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, UC Berkeley alumnus and former Cal football player, spoke with The Daily Californian.

Garamendi said although the environment on campus has changed since he was a UC Berkeley student during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s, students today should strive to act on issues that affect them.

The Daily Californian: With regard to football today, what are your feelings about the issues surrounding Memorial Stadium?

John Garamendi: ... The Memorial Stadium has to be rebuilt, and I very strongly support the construction of it. I believe the university has to enter into negotiations with the opponents and find a resolution out of court. The court resolution of this issue is going to be long and difficult, perhaps victorious, but nonetheless significantly delaying the reconstruction of the stadium and the attendant athletic facilities.

DC: College tuition has really increased since you were a student. Last year at the March regents’ meeting, when the regents voted to increase fees again, you were upset at the rise in fees and you wanted to take action. Why hasn’t anything in the state been done to buy out the fees this year to make sure that the fees don’t continue to increase?

JG: I think there’s several reasons why the state government has not bought out the fees. First of all, the university and the regents, over my objection, did not ask the state to buy out the fees. In fact, the Office of the President and the regents capitulated before there was even a fight and said that they would impose a fee prior to the legislature even considering the budget for the university.

I think that’s an extremely bad tactic, but nonetheless it was done. And the CSU system did the same thing. This coming year, it is my desire to have the administration of the university and the regents oppose any fee increase and call upon the governor and legislature to fully fund the university as well as the CSU system and not tax students.

DC: Are there any specific ways to combat that, aside from having influence within the board of regents or within the government?

JG: I think the students ought to be rising up and doing what we did in the ’60s. All for change, demand change. And the complacency of most of the students on this matter is disturbing to me. Now, there are students that are actively opposed to student fee increases, but most students just quietly accept that the University of California will soon be as expensive as most private schools. That’s wrong, that’s bad public policy.

DC: Do you think private, federal and other types of non-state funding should be more uniformly invested across all UC campuses?

JG: Certainly Berkeley and UCLA, being the oldest and the biggest campuses, have a greater capability than other campuses to engage in a wide variety of research, and therefore we would expect that those two campuses would receive the most money, and in fact they do. … It’s not a matter of fairness, it’s a matter of each campus building on its reputation and its capability to the maximum potential of that campus. What we are seeing is that all the campuses, including the new campus at UC Merced, are having considerable success in receiving research money, particularly from the federal government and other governmental agencies.

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