"WASHINGTON -- Students at California public universities have been staging protests against budget cuts and fee hikes all fall, capturing local and national attention with administration building sit-ins, 24-hour library occupations and large outdoor rallies.
Though they’ve been the loudest this fall -- and in particular, over the last few weeks, as the University of California Board of Regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent -- California’s students aren’t the only ones organizing to protect their financial and educational interests. As institutions and states take red ink to their budgets and green ink to their tuition bills, students in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York have begun speaking out. Students in Canada, Germany and Austria are also agitating against tuition hikes."
“A new era in student activism has … emerged out of California,” said Victor Sanchez, president of the University of California Student Association (USCA) and a senior at UC Santa Cruz, at the start of a panel discussion here Wednesday hosted by the Campus Progress branch of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “It’s the beginning of a student movement. It’s a movement against the privatization of our public institutions here in the United States.”
Angus Johnston, a historian who completed his doctorate at the City University of New York earlier this year and studies American student activism, said he sees “a lot more going on beyond California than most people recognize.” When students go to a state capitol or to Congress to lobby for their interests “that’s not something that makes The New York Times, that’s not something you get on NPR for doing.” Smaller campus protests, he added, aren’t getting much coverage beyond campus and local media.
