Dive Brief:
- Protesters occupied the University of California-Berkeley's Wheeler Hall in a “sleep-in” Wednesday night to protest the UC System’s planned tuition hike.
- About 60 students and activists were still in the building’s entryway at noon on Thursday, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
- The protest started after the UC Board of Regents approved a plan to hike tuition by 5% a year for five years.
Dive Insight:
It would be hard to believe that students would ever rally in favor of a tuition hike, even though the UC plan calls for fully covering the tuition and fees for 50% of the UC undergraduate students, according to UC President Janet Napolitano. Berkeley campus police said that about 200 students and activists joined the protest. Under the plan, unless the state kicks in more funding, the in-state UC undergraduate price tag would increase to $15,560 by 2019 from the current $12,192 per year.
Meanwhile, Napolitano is butting heads with California Gov. Jerry Brown over the hike.