Puerto Rican university strike leader visits UCLA
Three thousand miles away from Los Angeles, students at the University of Puerto Rico have been fighting the same tuition battle as some UCLA students.
When the University of Puerto Rico threatened to make budget cuts and raise fees this year, thousands of students banded together for a 60-day-long strike at the University of Puerto Rico’s flagship campus, Rio Piedras, and successfully gained concessions from university administration, including a temporary postponement of tuition increases.
As a member of the Law Student Action Committee at the University of Puerto Rico, Gamelyn Oduardo, helped organize strikes on 10 of the 11 campuses at the university in April.
Oduardo, a graduate student studying law, spoke Thursday at UCLA about his experiences in successfully organizing student activism against budget cuts and privatization as part of a West Coast speaking tour organized by the Freedom Socialist Party, a socialist political party headquartered in Seattle.
UCLA was the first stop on Oduardo’s tour, which will include presentations at City College of San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
Oduardo’s input and experience is intended to highlight the strike in Puerto Rico and emphasize the need to fight for public education, said Muffy Sunde, organizer for the L.A. branch of the Freedom Socialist Party.
“What (the students in Puerto Rico) did last year was fairly inspiring, to take on the system for two solid months,” Sunde said. “We think there is a lot to be learned.”
The situation in Puerto Rico parallels that in California in many ways, said Lincoln Ellis, Graduate Students Association president. In both places, political leaders and administrators have pushed the burden of the recession on students through unfair fee increases, he said.
“I don’t know whether the Puerto Rican experience is the exact recipe for what we should be doing, but I certainly think we can learn from their experience,” Ellis said.
Much like the University of Puerto Rico, the University of California has had to deal with dramatic reductions in state support and adapt to new funding realities over the past few years, said Phil Hampton, a UCLA spokesman. Funding and tuition are complex issues that evoke strong emotions not just in students but also in other members of the campus community.
“These are important issues, and they deserve to be debated and discussed in a constructive manner,” Hampton said.
Orduardo and other students began the two-month-long strike in April as a protest against a $1,200 fee increase per student. After student organizers tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with administration, an assembly of more than 3,000 students approved the strike as a last resort, Oduardo said.
At Rio Piedras, a core group of 500 lived on campus for 60 days, effectively shutting down its operations. The movement spread from Rio Piedras as nine other campuses were taken over by student strikers, Oduardo said.
The university made multiple unsuccessful attempts to silence the strikers, including using police force, bringing the issue to court, and creating a publicity campaign in the media. The strike ended when university administration agreed to negotiate with the students, Oduardo said.
Most of the demands from strikers were met by the administration, including an agreement to postpone tuition increases.
However, the postponement is only temporary as the university is set to raise tuition in January when the new semester begins, which could result in another strike, Oduardo said.
“Right now, things are pretty hectic (in Puerto Rico),” he said. “Time is ticking, and we’re trying everything once again to not have to go on strike.”
Oduardo and other student activists in Puerto Rico drew inspiration from last year’s UC budget protests in California, he said.
“We’ve seen students in California strike, seen you walk out of classrooms and sit in and occupy,” Oduardo said. “We’ve seen you guys in action.”
