A semester of protest

STUDENTS AT the University of Massachusetts Boston began to take back their campus center January 23 with a round-the-clock occupation to address the privatization of education and lack of democracy on campus, launching a much-anticipated semester of protest.

We started a permanent occupation in an effort to create a space where students, faculty, staff and members of the community can democratically discuss the issues facing the university and decide how to address them collectively. UMass Boston is the only public university in a city with over 100 colleges and universities, but with fee hikes of 8 percent coming year after year, working-class people are being pushed out or denied access to an education.

The UMass administration is pushing for its vision of the university--its so-called "strategic plan." That plan shows administrators want to create a major urban public university off the backs of current students by raising costs and recruiting more out-of-state and international students.

According to the plan, in order to attract these students, UMass Boston "will need increased recruitment resources, residence halls and other amenities." That means building large classrooms, increasing the number of adjunct faculty, hiking fees, adding for-profit schools within the university and constructing dorms that will hold over 1,000 students.

As the one of the only schools in Boston for the 99 percent, we want smaller classrooms, no fees, low-income housing for students, and better treatment of faculty and staff.

State and federal funding for education has been cut back across the country, and many administrations have been complacent about pushing the brunt of the costs onto students. Instead of joining the struggle to tax the rich--or to impose taxes on the 100-plus private colleges and universities in Boston--the UMass administration is pushing out working-class students who can't keep up with the fee hikes. If the administration cared about access to education for all, they would be occupying with us.

Another aspect of the privatization of education is the destruction of any democracy within public higher education.

Students play almost no role in major decision-making at UMass Boston. The unelected board of trustees, mostly made up of CEOs and lawyers, makes all the major decisions for all the UMass campuses. There are only five student trustees to represent all the students in the UMass system, and only two out of the five are allowed to vote at meetings. Seventeen out of 23 members of the board of trustees were appointed by the governor, and none of them have any background in education.

THE OCCUPATION is designed to mobilize opposition around these questions. As the Occupy UMass Boston Call to Action states:

For far too long, the 99% have been excluded from the global conversation about the direction of our schools, our neighborhoods, and our world. We are in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy UC Davis, Occupy Berkeley, and all other Occupy movements. We are in solidarity with the student revolt in Chile and those at hundreds of other universities who are holding down a space for the 99% in the conversation about our future.

One of the biggest successes of the occupation has been the unity among faculty, staff and students. All the unions on campus have endorsed the occupation, and faculty, staff and students are developing new relationships daily.

We are also seeing a shift in the political conversation on campus. Thousands of people on campus are talking about the rising fees and the lack of democracy. The occupation has inspired students and workers to ask a number of questions: Why don't we have a voice in any decision-making? Why is education being defunded while trillions are spent on war? Why was the former president of the UMass system, Jack Wilson, able to leave his position with a $500,000-plus compensation package, while our fees increased $700 last year?

But the biggest question is this: What is it going to take for students and workers to take back their university? In order to challenge the 1 percent and the attack on public higher education, we will need to build a mass movement of workers and students at all the universities and colleges that are under attack. The occupation at UMass Boston has been a first step in that direction. The next crucial step will be building for March 1, a national day of action for education.

The fight to end the privatization of education won't be easy. It is a long-term struggle, but if there is anything the Occupy movement has taught us, it is to raise our expectations.