Students and community activists started a major protest over the University of California-Berkeley tuition hike. The protest took place Wednesday night in the Wheeler Hall of the university campus. The students staged an overnight sit-in to object the proposed increase of tuition fees over the next five years.
On Nov. 18, 2014, hundreds of students rallied to demonstrate against the UC-Berkeley tuition hike. Time reported that under a plan approved Thursday, the tuition fees at the University of California schools could increase by as much as 28 percent by 2019.
Since 2001, UC campuses tuition has more than tripled even without the just approved tuition hike. In the recent years, students and their families have assumed more of the financial load of attending UC schools when the state cut back the share of overall expenses it covers. The economic recession speeded up the trend in California and at public universities and colleges across the country.
Many current UC students are against the Berkeley tuition hike. The protesters occupied the Wheeler Hall, home to the university's English department as well as the largest lecture hall on campus, on Wednesday night and has continued the coup through Thursday.
The UC system is one of the country's most expensive and over the last few years, the public colleges have remarkably seen large budget cuts.
The UC Berkeley tuition hike has intensified the protests staged by the UC students and fueled an even fiercer debate about how the UC system landed in such a relatively terrible financial routes. According to an article published by UC Berkeley Cal Alumni Association, the fate of UC's financial future was cast this week as a faceoff between two politically shrewd Western Democratic governors: California's third-term governor and Cal alum Gov. Jerry Brown, and Janet Napolitano, the former Arizona governor who is now in her second year as UC's president.
The UC Berkeley tuition hike was supported and approved by the university's Board of Regents in spite of the opposition from Gov. Jerry Brown. The Los Angeles Times said the increase would end a three-year freeze on tuition.
Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reported students who protested created a list of demands that includes dropping the pursuit of charges against Jeff Noven, a Berkeley student who was arrested on Wednesday at the San Francisco regents meeting.
In addition to dropping the UC Berkeley tuition hike, the student protesters also demanded to establish greater transparency for the University of California budget.
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