We are stepping back into an extremely tense climate on campus. Administration sent law enforcement to brutalize students in protest of genocide. UC Santa Cruz is in the midst of a structural budget deficit crisis that is now directly hurting students and staff. As the election only gets closer, anxiety and confusion loom overhead.
Time and time again, our administration has cracked down on student activism only for them to laud the effort decades later. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and divestment from apartheid South Africa both saw massive student protest and were met with harsh responses from administration. Now the efforts of those same students’ ideals are praised in the university’s own marketing.
We cannot wait for the opinion of our leaders to realign with what is moral and just — whether that be in defense of Palestine, the fair treatment of workers, or our institution’s defining values of respect, accountability, and transparency.
Although much of the frustration at UCSC has been directed at the campus decision makers living in our community, there are many others who remain even more removed from the student body. Above UCSC’s administration, our Chancellor, and even the President of the University of California, there exists another governing body — The Board of Regents.
Of the 26 board members, 18 seats are appointed by the governor to serve 12-year terms. This board makes the decisions. From tuition pricing, enrollment targets, and to perhaps most notably, financial investments and private partnerships, their choices affect the entirety of the UC’s 500,000-plus students, faculty, and staff.
Although it is explicitly stated in the state constitution that the charge of the body is to manage the institution on the public’s behalf, 10 of 18 appointed seats on the board are occupied by those with direct ties to the business world. Jay Sures concurrently sits as Vice Chairman of the United Talent Agency. Peter Guber is Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. Mark Robinson is a partner at Centerview Partners, a leading global investment banking firm.
How can we trust that our university will put morality over profit when our unelected leaders have more in common with billionaires than they do with the students who depend on them?
Those in the highest positions of power make decisions based on the perspectives they hear. Right now, money talks loudest. Had the financial loss of agreeing to pro-Palestine demonstrators’ demands not been outweighed by the profits from their association with Israel’s genocide, divestment could have been accomplished without a single tent being raised.
Last year, 52 percent of the UC’s core funding came from student tuition and fee revenue.
Our administration sees the millions of dollars coming from the pockets of students and families as a guaranteed revenue stream rather than what it truly is — a direct manifestation of the power we hold as their shareholders.
If the UC’s administration continues to see the nearly 300,000 students ensuring their salaries as a given instead of as constituents they must hold themselves accountable to, our voices will never be genuinely heard.
It is time we remind them of how loud we can be.
In 2022, strikes halted teaching across every UC campus as 42,000 academic workers walked off the job. Members of UAW 5810 and 2865, which have since combined into UAW 4811, protested the university’s refusal to provide living wages to its workers — the same workers it depends on to deliver the education it promises.
The UAW members who marched on picket lines that year did not beg for justice, they demanded it.
A month and a half later, strikers ratified newly negotiated contracts, and many of the demands that the UC had called impossible were met.
The trade-off on the administration’s side was clear. They stood to lose more by continuing the mistreatment of their workers than if they agreed to their demands. When we object to choices made by this institution’s leadership, we must use that same logic to guide our organizing. How can we make our protest more costly for the university to oppose than to support?
We came to this university intending to create better opportunities for our future and to be in community with those willing to imagine a more just world. That ability is a privilege we must take advantage of. We are at a research institution with a plethora of resources to inform ourselves in every way.
To not use our time here as a microcosm of our intention for the broader world — to work to form it in line with values of agency, compassion, and trust — would be a disservice to ourselves and the next generation of students who will walk the same redwood trails we have.
We cannot continue to play with the cards we are dealt. We must come together and fight for our future, for democracy, for all of the humanitarian crises across the globe, and for us to reclaim our hope.
This election season you will be told to vote countless times before Nov. 5. We have always and will always advocate for exercising your right to vote. That being said, democracy does not end with the ballot. As the students who will go on to shape this campus, city, state, nation, and world, we must use every tool we have to make that change — yes, through our votes, but also with our resources, words, and most of all, our actions.
Our voice may seem small in comparison to the issues we face, but, if UC students stand together, that voice is 300,000 strong.
300,000 is a lot of voices to ignore.
In solidarity,
Gwenyth Rodriguez-Holguin,
Keith Gelderloos
