UCLA Student Fee Hike Riots: UCLA Fee Hike Protest Video

The Board of Regents at UCLA will vote to hike undergraduate tuition fees by 32 percent over the next two years. It is estimated the 32 percent increase will cost each full-time student $2,500 over two years. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of students and faculty, in my opinion.

UCLA Covel Commons

Students and union members showed up by the hundreds, as university police barricaded the entrance to Covel Commons, where chants of "Who's university? Our university." Nightsticks and Tasers were used to force the crowd back. In the second day of protests, today, a sit-in ensued at Campbell Hall, which was closed for the day:

Inside, about 40 to 50 students had chained the doors shut shortly after midnight and were issuing e-mail statements.

I have no sympathy for these little university socialist liberals, who have such disdain for conservatism. I hope they get their tax sooner, rather than later, which will likely count among their first real "life experiences."

California is broke...it desperatly needs revenue. These ungrateful students and faculty should be honored to step in and do their part to fund a long-held bastion of far-left indoctrination. Conservatives have been doing just that for most of their working lives, whether they want to or not.

Tommy Le, a fourth-year student at UC Santa Cruz, who left his campus at 3 a.m. today in a convoy of two buses headed south. Le, 21, an American studies major from El Monte, said he was worried about how he being able to afford the higher charges, starting with an additional $585 for the rest of the school year.

Mr. Le, have you taken any interest in the unemployement rate today? Grown-ups are obsessed with it. Do you have any idea how many parents are trying to figure out a way to make their mortgage payment, now that the Democrat housing bubble has decimated the market? People have real-life problems, and most people have more than just themselves to worry about.

In the 2004 Spring issue of the UCLA Magazine, Ajay Singh wrote:

Conservatives, for their part, object that far too many members of the faculty are moral relativists who eschew notions of good and evil and don't believe that certain immutable truths in Western thought are worth preserving. Worse, liberal faculty teach students to view religious and patriotic values with suspicion.

That, in any case, is the central idea behind Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, a book written by Ben Shapiro '04 and published earlier this year. Shapiro claims that while he was a student at UCLA in 2002, he was fired as a columnist for the Daily Bruin. The reason, according to Shapiro, was that he went on a local radio talk show and criticized UCLA's "pro-Muslim stance" — a reference to the Bruin's refusal to publish two of his columns against a Muslim-student organization on campus that Shapiro asserted supports terrorism.

A 2005 study printed in the Washington Post says 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative.

The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.

Rothman sees the findings as evidence of "possible discrimination" against conservatives in hiring and promotion. Even after factoring in levels of achievement, as measured by published work and organization memberships, "the most likely conclusion" is that "being conservative counts against you," he said. "It doesn't surprise me, because I've observed it happening." The study, however, describes this finding as "preliminary.

Conservative families go though emotional angst as they try to find a way to educate their children with some smattering of the conservative viewpoint, for balance. Shopping for the less expensive option of a state university leaves no avenue to diversity in thought, but lots of diversity in ethnicity. In fact, your white son or daughter will likely fall to the back of the admissions line, no matter their test scores. Those who "get" from the government will lap-up the liberal bias. The good university-educated liberal-ales will march into the world with no understanding of conservative issues, and they won't have a clue how far-left and dangerous they are to American's founding principles.

I'm for monumental tution increases at universities all over the country. It's the only fair thing to do. More Americans say they are conservative, than moderate or liberal, and both conservatives (40%) and moderates (37%) number almost twice those admitting they are liberal (20%). In the video below, you'll see a very noisy and animated protest. Really, it could not happen to a more deserving school unless it's UC Berkely.





 UCLA Student Fee Hike Protest (video)