In the past week, students at various University of California campuses have demonstrated against the Regents’ decision to raise fees 32 percent by next fall, beginning with a 15 percent mid-year increase, by holding protests outside administrative offices and barricading themselves in school buildings. About 100 students have been arrested. As a Berkeley student away from campus, new technologies keep me informed of the escalations with surprising speed. My Facebook news feed has been flooded with status updates expressing their solidarity with the student protesters, invites to events for debriefs on the ‘Wheeler Occupation’ and police brutality, links to pictures and videos, and groups telling me to write to my congressperson conveying my discontent. Last night, I received a text message informing me that students had taken over the UC Office of the President in Oakland and that riot police were on hand. I’m sure the protesters liken themselves to modern-day Mario Savio’s substituting Wheeler for Sproul Hall and 32 percent fee hikes for restrictions on political activity. Regardless of whether that comparison is apt, social networking outlets have taken the place of megaphones as the primary source for information dissemination.

Some have dismissed the protests as an overblown sense of entitlement to an affordable education, which is not guaranteed anywhere in the California Constitution. While that may be true, California’s Master Plan for Higher Education is based on the principles of universal access and a tuition-free education for all. This is why California residents pay ‘fees’ instead of tuition, though that principle has been eroding in recent years. The proposed increases will further degrade the ideals of the Master Plan.

Others, like Ian Ayres on the Freakonomics blog, are arguing for a high-cost, high-aid pricing model, where richer students pay more so that poorer students can use financial aid to decrease their overall cost (it might even raise Berkeley’s US News rankings! Ayres adds). This is the direction many states and individual institutions are going and it may have some merit. However, when the state is $24.3 billion dollars in debt and the governor has both cut funding for higher education and expressed his desire to cut Cal grants, the main state funding source for low-income students, extra revenue from tuition will most likely be directed towards filling funding gaps rather than making college affordable for everyone.

Many see the protests as pointless. The state is facing an extreme budget crisis, and a significant portion of the University’s budget comes from the state, so cuts in funding have forced the Regents to raise fees in order to make up the difference. It doesn’t make sense to target the Regents when the problems lay with the legislature. I still support the protests – we have every right to express our displeasure, especially when these fee increases are accompanied by class size increases, reductions in class offerings, and other decreased resources – but I also recognize that demonstrating and taking over classrooms and offices will not stop the fee increases, no matter how many students are arrested or beaten with batons. However, there is one area in which the protests have succeeded: they have drawn national attention to the issue. Media attention is necessary for social movements. I’m hopeful that the protesters can harness this and turn their efforts toward more productive activities like lobbying Sacramento to increase our funding for next year and overturning Prop 13, the reason we’re in this mess. Fortunately, it seems they may be taking steps in the right direction.