The corporate and financial elite that sit on the University of California Board of Regents just announced that they will close their doors to the public when they vote on new cuts to education in their 2012 budget request. The public can only “participate” through a sham teleconference. This comes on the heels of Chancellor Reed’s announcement that the California State University Board of Trustees will not engage in a public discussion or revote on the illegitimate tuition increase they passed last Wednesday. The leadership of both the UC and CSU systems refuse to face thousands of outraged students, faculty, and staff who demand they stop treating the 99% like an ATM.
Click here to demand the UC Regents and CSU Trustees open their doors to the public!
On November 16th, the Trustees expelled hundreds of students and workers from their meeting before voting behind closed doors to increase tuition by 9%. A move that may be illegal. California’s public education system, a promise of the past to the future and the only way to assure our state’s economic growth, has been decimated by $17 billion in budget cuts and tuition increases since 2009. $2.5 billion in additional cuts are coming in December, and the 1% on the boards of CSU and UC are again trying to pass them on to students, teachers, and the working class. Now is a time where they should be seeking to break from the status quo and support the concrete solutions for banks and millionaires to pay for refunding education. Instead, they are doing the opposite.
The Regents and the Trustees are made up of corporate elites such as Bank of America Director Monica Lozano. It’s time for them to stand with the 99% and support making Wall Street and the 1% pay to refund education.
Yours in the fight for economic justice,
The ReFund California Coalition