“We’ve got the caskets ready,” Artem said. Protesters who chatted with SN&R last week on the UCD campus shared a universal message: Going on about a decade now, students have footed more of the bill for California State University and University of California education costs than the state of California. And this, they say, is backward. CA Davis undergrads, for CAMPTIOL POU instance, were hit T with a 19 percent tuition increase this academic year. The CSU
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where he was going to house all the visitors this week. “They’ll stay on the quad, we’ll give them some food, and on the morning of the fifth we’ll go to Sacramento.” Some protesters say they will walk from UCD to the Capitol that morning. Walking will be a common theme. UC Berkeley’s Eaton says more than 100 people have been regularly attending planning meetings for the protests on the East Bay campus. And he says “hundreds” will begin marching to Sacramento, stopping at community colleges along the way to sleep, this Friday. “I’ve certainly never seen unions and students working together in the scale that we’re working together,” said Eaton, who himself is a member of the 12,000-strong United Auto Workers union. Other union organizations have signed up, too, at www.occupyeducationca.org: SEIU 1021 and nearly a dozen state teachers unions. “It’s time for us to have a budget in California that makes banks and millionaires pay to re-fund public education,” Eaton said, reiterating the movement’s talking point. This protest mantra has evolved a bit from past years. At previous day-of-education actions, people protested to keep their jobs or to end cuts to school funding. This year, though—and in part due to Occupy’s “99 percent” slogan—the focus is directed on California’s billionaires and uberwealthy. People still want to keep their jobs, of course, but they also want the wealthy to pay. The day of action is scheduled to begin Monday, March 5, at 10 a.m., when organizers say tens of thousands will meet at downtown’s Southside Park before marching to the Capitol. Events will go on until early afternoon. And that’s when things might get interesting. Ω
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“I think that the pepperspray incident is overplayed a bit,” junior Raskem argued. “As a longer-term strategy, we can’t rely on one sensational incident to bring people in; “We’re we’re trying to show a sysgraduating temic problem. “One rogue officer doing a college with a thing is not going to inspire a mountain of movement to address longerdebt and dim job term issues.” To bring the focus back to prospects. banks and billionaires, a There’s a smaller group of UCD students widespread kicked off a daily blockade of the campus’ U.S. Bank branch sentiment in January. Their goal was to among students highlight what they say is the that banks got company’s sweetheart deal with the university; U.S. Bank bailed out and logos appear on Davis student we got sold out.” ID cards and the branch has a monopoly on student loans and Charlie Eaton accounts, they argue. The UC Berkeley graduate student branch has had to shut down on several occasions, but still remains open. And the UCD administration is resolved to continue IN STUDENT LOAN DEBT its partnership. This week, university officials say they will allow students to pitch tents and re-occupy UCD grounds on March 3, the day before marchers from the Bay Area arrive at the campus to sleep before the Capitol event. “We’re occupiers. We’re just going to occupy the quad,” Artem responded when asked
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to their movement, but did sort of overshadow their cause, some say.
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system lost $650 million in total state funding. And, because most public universities are collecting more money from students than from the state, students are looking to banks and the federal government for loans. In 2011, American college students accumulated more than $100 billion in student-loan debt, according to the College Board. The total amount of outstanding U.S. student-loan debt in America topped the $1 trillion mark this past year as well; it now tops consumer credit-card debt in the United States (see “The college bubble”; SN&R Feature Story; October 6, 2011). It was these statistics that partially inspired Occupy UC Davis to set up encampment on the quad this past fall. The November 18 pepper-spraying brought unprecedented attention
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