Feature Archives

On April 26, 2007, Danny Glover announced that he is joining with Congresswoman Barbara Lee in supporting the ongoing boycott by UC workers against UC Berkeley due to the unsolved issue of pay equity for custodians. Before the boycott began last year, custodians who clean the dorms and classrooms at UC Berkeley have been urging the Chancellor to end poverty wages. According to the Economic Policy Institute 100% of the custodians at UC Berkeley earn a wage that is below the $19.78 per hour needed to support a one parent and one child household in the East Bay.

On April 26th, students from San Francisco State walked out of classrooms to protest higher fees in education and the privatization of public education. Students first met at Malcolm X plaza and then marched towards the center of campus. More students began to file out of class and join the crowd. Later, the students went inside different buildings to encourage even more students to walk out. At the highest point of the protest there were about a thousand students marching.

On April 26th, the Stop BP-Berkeley student group opposing the $500 million dollar contract between oil giant British Petroleum and the University of California Berkeley held its first teach-in on the issues surrounding the agreement. Meanwhile, the newly-formed Phoenix coalition, which emphasizes direct action to "free the University of California," occupied a redwood tree in the heart of campus to raise awareness of the issue.

Every year on April 20, folks gather around North America to celebrate and smoke. UC Santa Cruz has historically had one of the largest gatherings around, a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts, spurred on by UCSC's unique cultural history and the occassional spotlights from outside (like Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago). Its a big community event - a place where thousands of people can bring a bunch of friends, musical instruments, frisbees, you name it, and just have fun. This year, cops and administrators attempted to intimidate students, but the party went on.

On April 14, 2005 thousands of students and workers at UC Santa Cruz shut down the campus in a coordinated statewide strike by low-paid service workers in AFSCME 3299. The strike, organized by AFSCME, clerical workers in the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), T.A.s in the United Auto Workers (UAW), students in the Student and Worker Coalition for Justice (SWCJ) and others, was one of the biggest actions UCSC has seen in recent years and led to a new, better contract for AFSCME workers within two weeks.

April 14 should be remembered as the day the university ground to a halt. It shows the power that students and workers have if they have concrete demands, solid strategies and a long-term vision for a united university run from the bottom up. April 14 was the result of years of organizing by the unions (particularly AFSCME), as well as students and a few profs engaged in labor solidarity. It shouldn't be seen as some spontaneous event, but as the product of the anger, empowerment, and hope that many in the community felt. Read More and View Photos

bigmammoth writes: The University has required all of its employes to participate in an Online Ethics Briefing. Unfortunately several of the ethics pages went missing from the official distribution. Fortunately some pages have been recovered and posted here. It would be ideal if people could email the missing ethics pages to ethics@ucsc.edu as well as share them online to ensure that future ethical briefings do not accidentally misplace these critical pages again. Read More Satire About UCSC's Online Ethics Briefing

With hundreds of students expected to protest, U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps recruiters announced on April 17th their withdrawal from the Last Chance Job Fair being held at UC Santa Cruz on April 24th. Although the law prevents schools from banning recruiters outright, UCSC students, through massive protests, have effectively prevented recruiters from operating on campus for nearly three years.