UCI Students March With Millions

Photo Courtesy of the OC Register

“I’m fired up and I can’t take it no more!”

That was just one of the many chants that rang through the University of California Irvine’s campus as a crowd of 100 plus students waved posters and jabbed signs into the sky where they gathered around the flag poles and steps near UCI’S Aldrich Hall. Many of these students had missed class to sit in the blazing sun to join in a nation wide movement to demand for free tuition, cancelation of all student debt and a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers.

On November 12, over 120 publically funded campuses across the country participated in The Million Student. The event at UCI , only one of the many university particpants, was sponsored by the UCI student body committee, ASUCI. It lasted from 11am to 2pm drawing students in and out from their classes to listen and speak about the hardships and inequality they have faced while attending the university.

“Why go to class if you can’t afford it?” said third year UCI student and organizer, Taylor Chanes, to students leaving the protest to go to class. “We need to stand together as a school and as a community to demand free higher education! It will take a million students marching together to make a change.”

The average annual cost for tuition across all UC campuses for an instate student is roughly $12,240. This figure does not account for other fees such as housing, campus insurance or texts books and supplies. If you were to take all these other factors into account, the average student pays around $30,000 a year, multiply this number by four and students are paying $120,000 for their higher education. For out of state students, these numbers are nearly doubled.

Chanes, herself $20,000 in debt and working part time at the Starbucks on the UCI campus, led the way encouraging speakers to step forward to the open mic portion of the protest.

She began another chant, “Students are unstoppable, debt free is possible!”

Oliver Flores, a member or the organizing committee and speaker at the event, waved his sign like a pitch fork and yelled with the crowd that he was fired up. Flores said that the cost of education is a reoccurring problem found with most first generation students and people of color. “It's not just about the money,” he said. “It's the struggles of being a first generation student and the emotional stress and burdens that come with that”.

Photo by Brittni Ortega

Although there were plenty of supporters amongst the crowd, one brave dissenter offered his view, creating a back and forth stand off between the fired up crowd and the lone individual standing before 100 plus of his peers.

Anton Castaneda said, “socialism cannot exist in this country. This country is not built off of free stuff. It’s built of of equal opportunity”.

The crowd became uneasy. Backlash yells of “shame” and “boos” quickly followed Castaneda’s brief and interrupted discourse, ending the open mic section of the event.

At 1pm, the march of the students began by many students lifting signs that read anything from “’I can’t afford school no more’” to “’Fuck prisons, Fund higher education’”. Students chanted fervently down UCI’s Ring Road, past the humanities department, into the Claire Trevor School of Arts, and finally ending in the freshmen Mesa Court housing. Bystanders and onlookers watched curiously, some even joining in the march and chants.

Cars honked and drivers fussed as UCI students blockaded the street at the corner of West Peltason and Pereira, forcing drivers to wait for the mass of students to pass.

1:20pm, the Million Student March ended. But some students, remained in unison and joined the UCI Black Student Union to stand in solidarity to support students from the University of Missouri who are currently facing inequality at the campus. Only a few days before this event, death threats to African Americans were posted on social media sites, forcing students to flee the university campus out of fear. Instead of blockading Aldrich hall, which was a thought floating through the minds of some, students ultimately chose to support their friends and allies and locked arms in the ongoing chain of people near Langson Library and stood in silence.

When the posters finally came down, signs were put away, and the teen angst settled down a still zealous Flores said “The goal was to bring light to these issues through multiple actions on different campuses because we are well aware that next year is an election year. The point is to pressure the presidential candidate into acknowledging our demands as students”.