Berkeley City Council votes to support grassroots campaign Take Back UC

BY GLADYS ROSARIO

Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday evening to support the budding grassroots campaign Take Back UC, which advocates providing quality education, improving patient care and stabilizing finances across the UC system.

Last week in Sacramento, a coalition of elected officials, students, UC workers, community members and organizations launched the campaign to address the state of the university.

“There seems to be broad agreement that UC focus is out of step, and it has been for some time,” said Todd Stenhouse, communications director for the university’s largest union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which is involved in the coalition. “We want to see UC focus on the core of its mission.”

UC spokesperson Dianne Klein rejected the group’s assertions, noting that the UC system has already taken steps to increase the number of patient-care employees, stabilize undergraduate tuition and boost the university’s financial stability.

“(For) years, UC has thrived, and they want to take it back?” Klein said. “What are they going to do with it?”

Four UC Berkeley students voiced support for the campaign during the City Council meeting’s public comment session. They told stories about how they were affected by past tuition increases, decreased state funding and “the privatization of the UC.”

UC Berkeley sophomore Disha Banik said during public comment that while she considers herself “middle class,” her mother has been unemployed since the recession. Paying for the education of both Banik and her sister, who attends UC Davis, has caused “emotional burden and financial stress.”

“Students are not getting the affordable education they used to receive just a couple decades before, and on top of that, workers are being gypped,” Banik said. “It’s a great injustice that the UC is prioritizing serving the executives of the university rather than the students and workers that make this university possible.”

Senior Stefan Elgstrand, who also spoke at the meeting, said that in the past, it was “nearly free” for students to attend public institutions of higher education in California.

“Whether you’re lower class or middle class, it’s affecting everyone,” he said.

Undergraduate tuition, however, has not increased in the past two academic years, and after an announcement by UC President Janet Napolitano on Wednesday, the UC system is hopeful tuition will remain stagnant for the third consecutive year.

“It wasn’t as though we were balancing the budget on the backs of students,” Klein said. “We only increased tuition as a very last resort.”

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who proposed the resolution, said he hopes Take Back UC will unite several individually organized groups under a common cause.

“Each one of these groups always seem to be out on their own,” he said. “It seems that having a coalition where people can support each other is quite exciting.”

[Source]: Daily Californian