UC President Urges Delay in Fee Increase

In the face of student protests, University of California President Jack W. Peltason recommended Thursday that the UC Board of Regents delay approval of a proposed 10% undergraduate fee hike in the hopes that the increase can be avoided.

Citing California’s improving economy, Peltason told the regents that he planned to urge Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Legislature to appropriate an additional $38 million for the nine-campus system, which has absorbed deep cuts in recent years.

“I have no inside information. No promises have been made,” Peltason said later, explaining that he has received no assurances that the Legislature will deliver. If it does not, Peltason said, he will return to the board no later than July 1 to seek approval of the 10% fee hike.

“Without additional state appropriations, anything less than a 10% fee increase would be disastrous,” he said, noting that even with such a hike, UC is anticipating $23 million in cuts. “Clearly we would prefer not to increase student fees and also to reduce the cuts we are planning to make. . . . We hope the Legislature and the governor will provide us the funds to do both.”

Peltason’s remarks seemed to signal a shift from a month ago, when regents received the UC budget plan and its proposed fee increase with a mixture of regret and resignation. In past years, the board has quickly approved UC’s budgets soon after they are proposed. On Thursday, however, several regents welcomed Peltason’s decision to wait, putting the ball back in the Legislature’s court.

“We should start a program of trying to convince the members of the Assembly to find $40 million someplace,” Regent S. Stephen Nakashima said. “This would show the students that maybe those people in Sacramento do care.”

Several students who addressed the board Thursday indicated that they would welcome such a sign. Naomi Falk, a third-year student at UC San Diego, told the regents that middle-income students were being “squeezed out” by rising fees. And the UC Student Assn., which has protested the fee hike since it was proposed last month, gave the regents a token of their esteem: a collection of students’ shirts.

“You can rip the shirts off our backs, but please don’t raise our fees,” said Erik Nielsen, a 22-year-old senior at UC San Diego who addressed the regents while carrying several of the more than 1,500 shirts donated by students to draw attention to their cause. Nielsen gave the shirts--which were emblazoned with slogans such as “Invest in Schools, Don’t Steal From Them”--to board Chairman Howard H. Leach, who jokingly urged each regent to take one home.

State Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who has joined with 22 other senators to send letters to the governor opposing new fee increases, said Thursday that he believes Peltason’s strategy is appropriate.

“I do not think it is possible to pass a state budget that contains that kind of a tax increase on the middle class,” said the Democratic leader, referring to the proposed fee hike. “We’ve done it too many times and we’re not going to do it again.”

A two-thirds vote of the Legislature is needed to get budget approval. The state Senate has 40 members.

Lockyer said he had spoken to Peltason earlier in the week and believes that it will be possible to appropriate more money for the UC system. “The budget is tight,” Lockyer said. “But I think it’s a realistic goal.”

Aaron P. Leifer, a senior studying psychology at UC Irvine, said she was “astounded” by the proposal to delay the fee increase.

“With the battles we’ve had to wage to get Peltason to listen to student issues, I’m delighted. But as to whether it will really happen, I’m skeptical at best,” Leifer said.

UCI Student Body President Acidria Drati said many students who have taken out loans are already working long hours to pay for fees and living expenses.

“An increase in fees would be just another slap in the face to students,” he said. “Though we are paying more money, it’s not going towards the number of classes being offered. So it is not benefiting us.”

Drati said students are paying twice as much as they were five years ago but frequently are unable to get into classes they need for graduation.

Last month, university officials presented the Board of Regents with a revised budget plan that called for what amounts to a $380 increase in undergraduate fees for the 1995-96 school year. The plan, which would bring the average total fees per student to $4,491 a year, also recommended similar fee increases for the following three years, with a third of the money set aside for financial aid.