SF State Protest Ends, 'Open University' Continues At Cal

The occupation of a San Francisco State University building ended early Thursday morning with dozens of arrests, but a different kind of protest is continuing through Friday at the University of California at Berkeley.

Both protests were sparked by recent budget cuts to the UC and CSU systems.

Students at UC Berkeley have been holding an "open university" since Monday at Wheeler Hall, where they are "creating a model for what it would be like if education was truly public and free," an event organizer said Thursday.

Ari, a UC Berkeley student who declined to give her last name, said she and dozens of other students arrived at the Wheeler Hall, which houses various humanities departments, on Monday and haven't left since.

The students have organized study sessions, teach-ins by professors, "skill shares" by students with unique skills, movie viewings, and musical performances.

She said shortly after noon Thursday that about 70 students were participating. A teach-in was scheduled this afternoon on UC's accounting practices by Charles Schwartz, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus. Thursday night, a student planned to teach a session on how to do Michael Jackson's "moonwalk."

The events have taken place during what is normally referred to as "dead week," the week before final exams.

"Our big motto right now is 'dead week to live week' because we're trying to bring it back to life and utilize public space that would otherwise not be utilized," Ari said.

Wheeler Hall was the site of a more contentious occupation on Nov. 20, when more than 40 people were arrested after entering the building and barricading themselves inside for about 12 hours.

This occupation has been more peaceful, with no arrests made or citations issued, university spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

The hall is normally open until 10 p.m., but many students have slept in it overnight this week.

Police initially warned students that they could be arrested if they continued to sleep in the building, but Mogulof said "a decision was made to give them a room or two."

Ari said the events are scheduled through Friday night, and that the group will leave before the start of finals on Saturday. She added that the group has been "mopping every hour" to keep the building clean for students coming in for their exams.

Things were more confrontational in San Francisco Thursday, where the 24-hour occupation of a building at SFSU ended this morning with dozens of arrests.

A group of students entered the Business Building on campus sometime before 5 a.m. Wednesday and refused to leave, with many more surrounding the building as a human barricade.

At 5:14 a.m. Thursday, university police entered the building with the help of San Francisco police and the California State University Critical Response Unit.

Twenty-five people were arrested on a variety of trespassing, unlawful assembly and resisting-arrest offenses, university spokeswoman Ellen Griffin said.

Police arrested 12 people inside the building, 11 people outside the building, and two others who later blocked 19th Avenue in an attempt to prevent the police vehicles from exiting.

One of the students arrested outside the building, Tayler Mehit, 20, said police broke through a window and entered the building to arrest the occupiers while also pulling apart the human barricade outside the doors.

Mehit, a junior who is majoring in political science, said the protest was both good and bad, because while it raised awareness about budget cuts to public universities, none of the group's demands were met.

The students had demanded that the university restore funding to the ethnic studies program, make the campus administration's processes more transparent, and abandon plans for a new athletic center.

Emily Caruso, a sophomore art major, also took part in the human barricade outside the building. She said the Business Building was chosen for the occupation for both logistical and symbolic reasons.

She said the building has only four entrances, the lowest number of any major structure on campus, so "logically the building was the easiest to occupy."

Another major factor was that the business department is one of the only departments not facing budget cuts, Caruso said.

"I feel like by occupying the business building, we're saying it's not business as usual, and we must take a stand against these cuts," she said.

Some students were angry at the protesters for disrupting classes in the building. More than 3,200 students and 49 faculty members were impacted by the occupation, which came a week before finals begin on Dec. 16.

"Some students were saying nasty things that could have made the situation worse, but overall every single one of those altercations were handled with ease," Caruso said.

Griffin, the university spokeswoman, said that after the students were removed from the building, crews had to get classrooms ready for the first classes of the day at 8:10 a.m.

The building "was not badly damaged," she said. "It took a reasonable amount of time to turn the building around in time for classes this morning."

The CSU budget was slashed by $564 million this fiscal year. In the UC system, undergraduate student fees will increase by more than $2,500, or 32 percent, by the 2010-11 school year.