Thoughts on Berkeley by Alex Poska

A guy I used to usher with at Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach goes to school up at UC Berkeley. Apparently, there's alot of trouble/conflict between the students and the faculty on the raise of tuition that will go into effect. I asked Alex's opinion to find out first hand what was going on. Here's what he said:

"Its a long story.. but short:
They are raising our Fee's 40% in the next 12 months which makes tuition unaffordable for even middle class people. we have been protesting that, as well as the undemocratic election of the UC Regents, the un-transparent budget, the layoffs of workers and professors, the paycut people are getting while the admins raise their salaries, and raising of rents on school-owned housing.

We have been taking a lot of direct peaceful action like occupying buildings to use a 24 hour study spaces, holding rallies, engaging and confronting administrators about solving the problem.

They have in turn sent the police on us to beat us, arrest us in our sleep and they continually try to shut down our movement and hinder our free speech and free assembly rights. So we are protesting that as well.

We are trying to have more dialogs with the adminstration and hopefully they will be more helpful than hurtful in the movement but things are up in the air."


-Alex Poska