All eyes from the University of California system, and some from outside it, will be on UCLA today and tomorrow. No, not to observe the Bruins licking their wounds from Monday night's embarrassing loss to Cal State Fullerton on the Pauley Pavilion hardwood. It's at UCLA where the UC Board of Regents, the governing body over the 10-campus system, will vote today on whether to implement 32 percent tuition hikes in the face of massive budget shortfalls. On Thursday, the board is scheduled to vote on putting the plan into action.
“This is a historic moment,” writes Jesse Cheng, a fourth-year Asian American studies major at UCI and student-regent designate, for the New University campus newspaper. “. . . If the increase passes, UC Irvine students will face the brunt of the public's failure to invest in the University.”
She's urging her classmates to join more than 1,000 students planning to descend on the Board of Regents meeting to protest the fee increase. Trips to Westwood are being organized both days by the Associated Students of UCI; email here if you want to participate and vist the ucregentlive.wordpress.com blog for updates.
“I will be there both days, on one side of the velvet rope, sitting at the table with the Board of Regents, speaking for the future of an affordable and quality UC,” writes Cheng. “I hope to see you on the other side.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.