I for one am pleased that students at UCSC finally are getting up off their knees and starting to demand some accountability. It isn't so much that the UC is run like a big corporation, it is that it is being run like Enron, with the upper administrative ranks looting the coffers while classes get huge, quality goes down, staff and junior-level faculty are paid 20% less than their counterparts at Cabrillo college, etc.

Someone high up the chain of command has decided to turn UCSC into Cal State Santa Cruz, create an education factory, and drive away the best and most productive faculty while destroying what little currently remains of quality education.

The fact that it is left up to a handful of idealistic 20 year olds to call attention to this in a way that might be less than perfect is hardly the point. The main issue is that the system is being looted, the administration is composed of utterly unqualified individuals whose sole function appears to be dismantling higher education in the same way that K-12 education in California has been decimated, and the students are paying more and more for less and less.

Sure, you can say these students were spoiling for a confrontation. But the fact is that the administration was spoiling for it too, and they gleefully brought in extra police from UC Berkeley to crack heads with impunity.

Personally I have a lot more objection to the behavior of the police who work for me and every other taxpayer than I do for the perhaps misguided attempts by some students to try to bring it to the public's attention.

The first priority is that this has to get noticed. The looting of the public education system continues only as long as they can do it in secrecy and with impunity.

The students have now raised the cost to these pirates. Bravo to them!