IRVINE : 75 Marchers Protest Hike in UCI Fees

About 75 UC Irvine students shouting slogans and waving placards blocked campus streets and crowded into the Administration Building on Wednesday to protest a 40% increase in fees.

The demonstrators marched to the intersection of Bridge Road and Pereira Drive, two of the campus’s main thoroughfares, shortly after 11 a.m. and blocked the road for about 30 minutes before moving the protest to Chancellor Jack W. Peltason’s office for another half-hour. The protest, which did little to disrupt activity on the 16,000-student campus, broke up peacefully.

“The UC system should be providing an affordable education for the children of California,” said protest organizer Xochitl Gonzalez, 20, a junior majoring in comparative literature. “This increase is going to further the split between poor and the rich in this state and make it more difficult for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to receive an education.”

The UC Regents--the governing body for the nine-campus University of California system--voted last month to raise student fees by $650 a year, the largest increase in the 123-year history of the system, beginning in September. At UCI, the new annual fees and activities charges will range from about $2,525 for undergraduates to $2,890 for graduate students.

Administrators said that while they “empathize” with the students, there is little they can do about the increase.

“This was not a campus-by-campus increase but a decision that was made across the board by the Regents,” said Kathy Jones, an associate vice chancellor.

Susan Cline, 21, a cultural anthropology major and a single mother who depends on welfare to feed herself and her 4-year-old son, said the increase will have a deep impact because she will soon be ineligible for further state education grants and has been forced to take out a $10,000 student loan.

“Society doesn’t want me to be dependent, but how am I supposed to become independent if I can’t afford to finish school?” she said. “And I can forget grad school. What does this mean for my boy?”

John Ing, 19, an English major from Los Angeles, said he depends on scholarships, grants and a 15-hour-a-week campus job to pay for school. He said he fears that if fees continue to increase, he will have to drop out.

“They should take money out of the administration,” he said. “California’s economic base is its economic system, not in salary increases for the chancellors.”

But not all students opposed the fee increase. George Salah, a 21-year-old senior political science major from Encino, said the increase is necessary if the university’s quality is to improve.

“The protest is ridiculous,” he said. “The only way the problems of this school are to be fixed is if it gets more money. All of our classes are overcrowded, there is not enough parking. Things aren’t going to get better without us spending more on our education and these people should accept that.”