CLICS Destruction

CLICS is officially closed and shut down.

There is a giant chain-link fence bolted in to the front door, and the side doors are securely locked.

Much of the ceiling has been torn apart, some of the wiring has been pulled down, the study carrolls are gone, and they have even scratched away some (but not all – just the ‘politically charged stuff’) of the art.

 

 

 

Preliminary photos can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3285577610918.2144278.1011987331&type=3

 

 

 

If you want to get involved in fighting back against these oppressive measures, please fill out the whenisgood link here:

http://whenisgood.net/abztwng

 Get ready for a campus-changing quarter, everyone.

Our Response to Chancellor Fox’s “Response”

On Wednesday, March 14, after two weeks of successfully reclaiming the Chancellor’s Complex Conference Room, students vacated the complex and moved to CLICS Library which had begun its 24 hour service for finals week. Though administration still plans to move forward with renovation of CLICS, we will continue pressing for a halt on construction until more student input can be submitted and heard. The following response letter was submitted to Chancellor Fox and several Vice Chancellors after the move to CLICS.

March 14, 2012

To the Chancellor and Vice Chancellors of the University of California, San Diego:

Chancellor Fox’s response to the demands made by a coalition of students, faculty, and workers drawn from organizations including the Public Education Coalition, the Student Affirmative Action Committee, and the student-run Co-operatives, makes no substantive commitments to accountability, transparency, or shared-governance. Our intention behind the demonstration on March 1 was to start a radical democratic process among students, workers, and educators, reassess our collective priorities as an educational institution, and come up with a comprehensive plan of action that will increase the quality of our education given the current crisis.

We are completely aware of the budgetary issues facing the state of California and its consistent slashing of necessary social programs such as education. Instead of responding to our campus-specific demands, however, you have chosen to remind us of problems in the state-budget of which we are already aware and against which we have been mobilizing for years. You have chosen to scapegoat “the magnitude of the cutbacks” and “the state’s contribution to educating each UC student” in order to explain your own non-transparent management of the university’s slashed budget. Further, in solely blaming the state, you have chosen to omit the Regents’ conflicts of interest as millionaire hedge-fund managers and real-estate executives, not to mention their potential conflicts of interest from personal investments in for-profit schools and companies closely associated with the university.

Chancellor Fox’s “Response” to the March 1st Demands

Dear Public Education Coalition:

We appreciate your initiative to organize activities on March 1 in support of public education in California. We support events that draw attention to the increasing challenges our University community faces because of the erosion of state funding, and we fully agree with the call for California to once again support the California Master Plan of Education as an integral facet of economic stability for our state’s families. We will continue to press the case for investment in the UC with out elected representatives in Sacramento.

You also have articulated a series of campus-specific, budget-related demands that range from support for selected academic support programs to access to campus spaces. We have and will continue to work across the campus to fairly accommodate the budget reductions that have touched every aspect of campus life. We take very seriously our responsibility to oversee the campus resources to benefit all. As we make these difficult decisions, we will continue to give strong consideration to input from all segments of the campus community.

Since 1990, the state’s contribution to educating each UC student has dropped more than 50%. The magnitude of the cutbacks cannot continue without seriously affecting the quality of education at the University of California. We share your disappointment and frustration with the deep and lasting budget cuts. Therefore, we encourage you to join the UC Regents and colleagues from all campuses on May 17, 2012 for a march on Sacramento. Our unified support can make a difference for current and future students.

Sincerely,

Marye Anne Fox

Chancellor

c: Executive Vice Chancellor

Vice Chancellors

CLICS Poll

In the spring of 2011, the closure of four libraries was announced, despite mandatory fees having increased 32% the previous year. Additionally, plans to renovate CLICS have been made by an advisory committee with members of ASUCSD as student representatives. As part of the goal of promoting transparency, shared-governance and democratization please respond to the following poll questions:

[The first question was first heavily edited by AS, then mistakenly left off the special elections ballot.]

March 1st Demands

STATE OF EMERGENCY: ACTION FOR EDUCATIONAL JUSTICE

University of California, San Diego

March 1, 2012

I. PREFACE

It is with immediate concern that the administration of the University of California, San Diego address issues of upholding the promises of the California Master Plan of Education for an accessible, public, and free University of California. Though the Master Plan does not qualify the meaning of accessibility and equity or address the structural racism of the education system, our expectation is that the University of California be accessible and free regardless of race, socio-economic status, immigration status, or other potential barriers to access.

We, the Public Education Coalition (Faculty, Graduates, Undergraduates, Staff, United Auto Workers, AFSCME Workers, and other workers’ organizations), Reclaim UCSD, the Student Affirmative Action Committee (The Asian Pacific-Islander Student Alliance, Black Student Union, Kaibigang Pilipino, Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ Aztlan, Muslim Student Association, Native American Student Alliance, Queer People of Color, Students with Disabilities Coalition), and numerous allies at the University of California, San Diego have the following concerns, expectations, and demands:

We, the Students, Faculty, Staff and Workers of the University of California, San Diego, demand that the library formerly known as “CLICS” be reopened, owned and run by and for students and librarians (not under the Executive Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs), and refunded by the University through decreases in administrator salaries and student fees and increases in taxes on the wealthy and corporations. In order to pursue these ends, we are committed to uniting with people and movements in all sectors of society, all around the world, from Chile to Puerto Rico, from Greece to Spain, from Egypt to Iran, from Peru to Ireland to the Phillipines, from Occupy Wall Street to Occupied Palestine, from UC Riverside to UC Davis to UC Berkeley, who share our commitment to the empowerment of workers, students, and the unemployed to create an equitable and compassionate society. Our peoples will rise to decolonize UCSD, which is on occupied Kumeyaay land, to decriminalize the border and to smash imperialism and capitalism in our country and throughout the world. Through collective struggle we will reverse the privatization of our University and reclaim public education as a human right for all people.

Statement at ASUCSD Public Input Session 2/22/12

I come tonight to express my deep disappointment with ASUCSD.

On Wednesday, February 8^th, a Resolution to support March 1^st and the Call to Action from the Public Education Coalition was passed by this governing body.

The language in this resolution is quite explicit in its declaration for AS to fully and actively support this call to action.

There have been lots of discussions lately about why AS as a body needs to maintain its neutrality on the position of Division 1 Athletics, while still encouraging students to vote; however, individual members are well within their rights to express personal opinions and stances on this issue.

The way I see it, this resolution supporting March 1^st binds AS as a body to actively support and educate the student body and the University Administration about March 1^st and help garner support for it.

When I went to UC Riverside for the Regents meeting on January 19^th, ASUCR was out there in the streets with us the whole time. They were passing out buttons and shirts that said “AS – Taking A Stand 2012.” They led chants and they were there when the cops showed up. They were exhibiting true leadership throughout the day.

Then I came back to UCSD, and what did I see? I saw student government bringing an election to students that will potentially have them raising fees on themselves in one vote; and including a survey question that hides proposed budget numbers from the greater student population and, in my opinion, delegitimizes students’ efforts to reclaim our university from the poisonous effects of fee hikes and privatization.

That’s not what I want to see from my student government. I want to see students dedicated to the issues that are hitting them the hardest. I want to see this body dedicated to issues that are greater than profit margins and resumé padding.

CLICS Clarifications to Guardian

[This letter was published by the UCSD Guardian available here: http://www.ucsdguardian.org/opinion/item/25318-editorials-should-support-student-orgs]

Dear Editors,

Our primary goal is to defend public education by engaging and empowering students. We are not the out-of-touch idealists featured in your article and editorial on January 26th.

The renovation of CLICS was not announced in response to the reclamation last quarter. It was announced in an A.S. Council press release on September 30th, 2011. Last year A.S. killed an $8 student fee to save CLICS, but now it wants to pass a $165 fee for D-1 sports.

Although students have taken responsibility for running CLICS, we have not set its hours, we did not know or plan for it to be open, and University Centers closes the building every night. The administration did not “invite student input” about re-opening CLICS. They re-opened CLICS without communication or negotiation, and only afterwards did they email students.

For a student-run news paper, your editorial board is surprisingly cynical about student-run organizations. The $370,000 you said it would take to run old CLICS is irrelevant to whether students can run a 100 seat study space in the new ‘Galbraith Hall’ (named for Chancellor John S. Galbraith and his lifelong commitment to libraries which have lost 16% of their budget at UCSD).  Running CLICS costs $450,000 annually, but renovation will cost $6,700,000, enough to run CLICS almost fifteen years.

Publication: Report on the Profitability of Education

The “Report on the Profitability of Education and the Exploitability of Students” was compiled by two UCSD students, based on the ‘Teach the Budget’ curriculum developed by graduate students at UCSC. It contains detailed sections on the cost of UC tuition, the regents, the state of California, student activism, and much more. It is fully footnoted with emphasis on primary sources.

It is available in a digital format, as well as a printable format, which folds into a booklet. References and Appendix are published online as well.

DIGITAL

PRINTABLE

REFERENCES AND APPENDIX

CLICS: A Recent History

[A skeptical and critical take on the CLICS Reclamation from a conservative, outside perspective can be found at http://skepticconservative.com/2012/01/11/ucsd-clics-break-in-a-story-untold/%5D

What was once CLICS, was opened in 1965 as Humanities/Undergraduate Library, UCSD’s first central library. Ironically, the building, and now the new lecture hall which will replace CLICS, was named after Chancellor John S. Galbraith in 1988 for his “lifelong interest in libraries.” [1]

On January 27th 2011, the UCSD Libraries reported that it had sustained a permanent budget cut of $5 million, and one time cut of $3 million. The libraries objected to Academic Affairs Office’s formula for allocating budget cuts because “1) it bears no discernible relationship to the size of the Libraries’ budget vis-à-vis the campus’ budget and 2) it’s in no way consistent with a stated intention to ‘protect the academic core.’” [2]

In February 2011, it was announced that CLICS, along with the Medical Center Library, Science & Engineering Library, and Scripps Library, would be forced to close due to a $60 million dollar cut to the UCSD budget, which had entailed the $3 million dollar cut to UCSD libraries. The estimated cost saved by closing these four libraries was $1 million annually. [3]

D1: Not Now

[A libertarian opposition to the referendum is available here]

A new referendum proposing to fund Division 1 sports with student fees will be open to vote between February 27 and March 9th. The referendum will charge students $165 per quarter. This amount is based on the recommendation from an athletics consultant. That consultant said an extra $5 million per year was the bare minimum needed to get into D-1 (our men’s water polo, volleyball and fencing are already D-1), but an extra $13 million to be “competitive.” Here is A.S. President Allyssa Wing on being competitive:

“We don’t want to be a university that is only in D-I but is not competitive,” Wing said. “We want to be able to provide scholarships [for] top-notch talent [that we] want to come to our campus. The number is a little higher than the projection, but that is to maintain our program and ensure that we don’t have to keep going back to students with more referendums” [1]

ast year, Wing and A.S. Council killed a referendum to fund the re-opening of CLICS with an $8 dollar quarterly fee. [CORRECTION: no referendum was actually voted on, it was a casual suggestion which never came through and which Wing did not support] Here is Wing on that issue:

“If A.S. came to students for fees, it opens up a lot of doors for the future of how A.S. is seen,” Wing said. “It’s a dangerous direction.” Wing said that creating the position of vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion suggests that there is money to fund the libraries. “If there is money to create a [new administrative] position, why are we closing down libraries?” Wing said. [2]