Previously: SF State Students Still Occupy Business Building
10:20 AM: Dozens of San Francisco State University students who occupied a building on campus were arrested this morning after a 24-hour protest of budget cuts and fee hikes to the state’s public university system.
About two dozen students entered the Business Building sometime before 5 a.m. Wednesday and refused to leave, with many more surrounding the building as a human barricade.
Classes in the building were canceled, and affected students, many of whom are studying for next week’s final exams, were told to meet with their professors at the Towers Conference Center.
This morning, at 5:14 a.m., university police entered the building with the help of San Francisco police and the California State University Critical Response Unit and arrested 23 people on misdemeanor trespassing charges, university officials said.
Ten other protesters outside the building were arrested for unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors.
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 she and several other students were taken away in a police van.
A group of students blocked 19th Avenue in an attempt to prevent the police vehicles from exiting, but they were eventually removed and the students in custody were taken to the parking lot of the Stonestown Galleria Shopping Center where they were cited and released, Mehit said.
She said the protest was both good and bad, because while it raised more awareness about the budget cuts, none of the group’s demands were met, including 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.
“They didn’t really offer to negotiate with us, they just waited for our numbers to dwindle,” Mehit said. “That says something about the administration when, rather than negotiate with things that are fairly simple, they would rather send in SWAT teams.”
University spokeswoman Ellen Griffin had said Wednesday that the university hoped to open a dialogue with the students to address their concerns, but had not been able to speak directly with anyone inside the building.
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 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.”
Mehit said occupations like the one at SFSU and other recent ones at University of California at Berkeley, and University of California at Santa Cruz are important in raising awareness about budget cuts and fee hikes to the UC and California State University systems.
“I think this is the only way we’re going to build an emerging student movement,” she said.
The CSU budget was cut by $564 million this fiscal year, and in the UC system, undergraduate student fees will increase by more than $2,500, or 32 percent, by the 2010-11 school year.
7:34 AM: The 24-hour occupation of a San Francisco State University building came to an abrupt end early this morning when university police entered the building and arrested dozens of people.
About two dozen students entered the Business Building sometime before 5 a.m. Wednesday and refused to leave.
Classes in the building were canceled, and affected students, many of whom are studying for next week’s final exams, were told to meet with their professors at the Towers Conference Center.
More than 3,200 students and 49 faculty members were impacted by the occupation, Griffin said.
Griffin said late Wednesday that university officials hadn’t been able to speak directly with any demonstrators inside the building.
“We’re monitoring on a regular basis and we’ll make decisions as circumstances dictate,” she said.
This morning, at 5:14 a.m., university police entered the building with the help of San Francisco police and the California State University Critical Response Unit and arrested 23 people on misdemeanor trespassing charges, university officials said.
Ten other protesters outside the building were arrested for unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors.
University officials said in a news release at about 6:30 a.m. that some protesters had reconvened at the corner of 19th and Holloway avenues, and that San Francisco police were responding to that spot.
Police were not immediately available to provide details.
Kim Geron, vice president of the California Faculty Association, said in a statement Wednesday that the students’ actions are a reaction to budget cuts and fee hikes in the state’s public university system.
“These students no doubt feel a sense of desperation as their educations and their futures are slipping away. The persistent budget cuts, fee hikes and elimination of courses have made graduating from college harder than ever,” she said.
