Blogs:

On Thursday morning, just before dawn, 26 students of the San Francisco State University were arrested by the police. The students were protesting budget cuts and increases in the tuition incorporated in the state’s public university system.

The students barricaded themselves in one of the university’s three storey buildings. According to a university spokesperson, chains were used to lock down the doors from the inside and that meant the police had to break the windows in order to get inside.

The students had taken over the building on Wednesday morning and when news of the same reached the school’s authorities, classes in that building were cancelled for the day to prevent any possible harm from coming to the attending students. This particular building conducts classes for 3000 students on a regular basis. The numbers have gone up in the recent weeks due to the approaching end of semester exams.

Besides their obvious indignation at the budgetary issues, there was also a list of other demands issued by the protesting students which included the wipeout of all student loans and an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The students who were arrested were later released after being charged with misdemeanors.

The school administrators said that the demands were beyond their purview and thus left no scope for any kind of negotiations with the protesting students. They were able to barricade themselves in the building for a period of 24 hours before the police came in and resolved the situation. Fortunately there were no injuries although there was some minor damage to property when the police tried to gain entry and make the arrests.

Unfortunately this particular incident is one in a series of recent protests taking place by student bodies across the region. The primary trigger of course has been the University of California’s Board of Regents decision to increase the fees of undergraduate courses by the huge 32%!

There have been tuition fee increases across 23 different California State University campuses including of course the San Francisco State University. The increase in tuition is around 30% as laid down by the CSU. Student protests in large numbers have taken place in at least three campuses including Berkeley. The protest at Berkeley was similar in the sense that several campus buildings were taken over by the students and dozens of arrests were made.

While the arrests made the local news, it was heard with a collective sigh of relief that there was no violence or any sort of aggressive methods adopted by the police or the protestors. Like the Berkeley campus protest which ended on quite the sobering note.

The protest there had taken on the form of a rock concert almost with over 60 people being arrested in the end. After which there was a incident of vandalism reported by the Chancellor at his home where another 8 people were arrested.

Students have always used protest as a powerful yet peaceful tool to make them heard but these incidents aren’t doing a lot good for the student or the issues they face.