FilAm Students Supporting UC Demonstration

By Erin Pangilinan

Earlier this fall, students, staff, and faculty across the University of California demonstrated against the 32% tuition fee hikes. What was intended as peaceful protests for some in the recent weeks, ended not only in arrests--but also beating, tasering, and shooting of students by police and demonstrators at various campuses, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis.

Overall students across wanted the UC Regents to address their concerns with the tuition increase UC. Some campuses had specific demands, some of which could have been more realistically attained than overturning the overall budget decision to increase tuition.

The Berkeley demands included a rehiring of all 38 custodial AFCSME union workers laid off, dropping charges of protestors occupying buildings, maintaining the current campus food vendors, and preserving leases of affordable housing to a student cooperative.

FilAm and Asian American students are on the frontline, one FilAm student was arrested at UCLA, another is currently facing charges for trespassing for occupation of a building.

Paul Nadal, a doctoral student in the Department of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley occupied the second floor of Wheeler Hall with other demonstrators for sixteen hours, resulting in a delayed class instruction. Nadal and others face trespassing charges and are set for a court date on December 23.

“I participate in the student movement against education cuts because I feel I have no choice but to fight back. When the very conditions of your existence and work are being undermined, you struggle and fight back. We are told these are difficult times. Programs and people are on the red. But we make plain through our actions the message that our futures are not reducible to the cold calculations of the economy.”

UCLA Undergraduate Students Association External Vice President, Susan Li emphasizes that the fight is not between police officers and students.

“While the tasering and arrests of students both at UCLA and UC Berkeley are unfortunate, I have been emphasizing that the issue at hand is not one between the students and the police but one between students and decision-making bodies like the regents and legislators. The media has been more so portraying the angle of the police brutality, but that is not the message we as student organizers want to send.”

For FilAm students, FilAm history and language courses are also in danger of being cut yet again. FilAm graduating senior at Berkeley, Alvin David, laments that the budget cuts put an additional strain on the movement for Philippine/FilAm Studies at Cal, “there may be no Tagalog classes offered next year due to budget constraints for actual administration and faculty.”

Many also forget those marginalized in student of color communities. Mary June Flores is a director of the UC Berkeley bridges multicultural resource center, an outreach and retention coalition aimed at promoting higher education for students applying into college and retaining students to graduate. Flores, also a former Berkeley Associated Student University of California Senator laments that immigrant students are some of the “most vulnerable” among students of color to the budget cuts given their legal status and ineligibility for federal financial aid.  Flores describes that many students feel “hopeless” and that their cries are falling on deaf ears of administrators that have failed to negotiate with students. These cuts signify a distress with some students unable to afford to enroll in classes next term.

While student demands were ultimately left unmet, the protests remain a symbolic in garnering attention toward educational challenges nationally.

FilAm President of the United States Student Association, Gregory Cendana told Philippine News, “Youth nationwide are frustrated by states balancing budgets by increasing college costs. The current economic recession has forced states to stand with their priorities and few, if any, are standing with students. The fact that higher education divestment is a country wide pandemic reinforces the need for increased federal investment in student aid.”

Cendana stressed the importance of students channeling their efforts in helping support the passage of HR 3221 Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), which would eliminate subsidies to banks and lenders and allocate an estimated $87 billion in savings into attempt to secure low-interest federal aid over the next ten years.

Cendana, an alumnus of UCLA hopes that students use their “amazing vitality from protests and marches and direct that energy into passing student aid reform and electoral organizing.”

“Legislators and the CA governor, who appoints the regents that vote of fee hikes, listen to demographics that vote in large numbers. One of the best ways students can direct their energy into effective negotiating with state leaders is to increase student voter registration. That is a hugely influential tool students can use when lobbying those who ultimately fund higher education."