University of California, Santa Cruz welcomes new students despite tensions over protests, budget cuts

This week, thousands of new faces arrived on campus nestled among the redwoods ahead of the start of a new academic year at UC Santa Cruz on Thursday.

For some students, staff and faculty, the excitement of a new school year is mixed with concerns about a budget shortfall and layoffs, new free speech policies, lingering tensions over protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, labor disputes and the conditions and availability of student housing.

Nicholas Robles, a fourth-year student and vice president of student life for the undergraduate student government, told Lookout that he looks forward to hosting social events while feeling a lot of anger alongside other students toward the university.

He said some students arrested at the Gaza solidarity camp in May are still recovering from the university’s response, which temporarily barred them from the campus, where many lived and many were unable to attend their graduations.

“I’ve heard that a lot of students are outraged,” he said. “Last year, students lost their housing, their degrees, their access to food, their basic needs like showers, and they were also seriously injured physically and mentally.”

Robles said, however, that he and many others are looking forward to the start of a new year. This year, the campus is welcoming about 5,700 new undergraduate students. Total undergraduate enrollment will remain about the same as last academic year, about 17,800. Of the total undergraduate and graduate students, about 9,000 students live in on-campus housing.

UCSC plans to build a new student housing complex near the base of campus and prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2025.

Robles said he is currently focused on creating excitement for the new year and new students.

“I try to organize fun events for students, like movie nights, dance parties and just meet-up events so students can meet each other and feel less pressure of, ‘How do I talk and how do I make friends on campus?'” he said.

Some faculty members are also sharing a mix of emotions as the new year approaches. Andy Skemer, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, said he’s really looking forward to teaching his classes and taking 10 students on a field trip to Lick Observatory this week.

This is the fifth year he has organized the trip to the telescopes atop Mount Hamilton in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose. He described one of the projects the students are involved in, which involves observing the changing position of Pluto.

“We look at the sky two nights in a row and the stars all stay in the same position,” he explained. “And Pluto, because it’s a planet that orbits the Sun—or used to be a planet—moves around in the sky a little bit from one night to the next. So you take a picture and you see a bunch of dots. Almost all of them are stars. One of them is Pluto, but you don’t notice it. And then when you look the next night, one of the dots moves and you know it’s Pluto.”

But as the new year begins, Skemer says he’s also concerned about the university’s finances.

Chancellor Cynthia Larive said in a statement earlier this month that it is one of the university’s biggest challenges. UCSC ended fiscal year 2024 with a $107 million deficit in its base fund budget.

“Given our budget situation, I will not be accepting any salary increases this year, including the 4.2% increase that was paid to our employees covered by our insurance policy in July,” she wrote in a statement.

Chief Financial Officer Ed Reiskin told Lookout in early August that the university would likely have to implement layoffs. About two weeks later, Larive announced that layoffs were underway.

“There still seems to be a lot of uncertainty about how the campus is going to turn around,” Skemer said. “I worry about what happens if there are vacancies or layoffs — the staff here already does so much. But we’re wearing them out.”

Chris Connery, a spokesman for the faculty union, added that he was concerned about the budget and its impact on the work environment of the entire campus community.

Also on the minds of many professors, Connery told Lookout last week, is the unfair labor practice charge that the state faculty association filed against University of California administrators last week with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB). The state faculty association, along with seven other UC campus associations, accuse the university of violating faculty freedom of speech in its handling of last spring’s protests.

“The faculty association believes the university has gone overboard in suppressing, discouraging and responding to the protests,” Connery said. He added that faculty members are looking for clarity from administrators on whether the university is respecting free speech and faculty rights.

Graduate student Rebecca Gross said the summer has been exhausting, but she’s excited to see her students and colleagues again. As president of the union representing university student workers, United Auto Workers Local 4811, she spent much of the summer organizing in the aftermath of the encampment protests and a UAW strike last school year.

Last spring, UAW workers went on strike to protest how UC administrators responded to Gaza solidarity encampments on several campuses. A judge issued a restraining order requiring the workers to end their strike, and the labor board is still reviewing an unfair labor practice complaint to determine whether the strike was legal.

Gross said the university responded to the strike by garnishing the wages of workers at all UC campuses.

“For some it was close to $2,000 – we were on strike for three weeks,” she said. “So if they’re trying to get us to pay back the full three weeks, it could be anywhere from $1,500 to over $2,000 depending on people’s pay scale.”

She added that the UC’s implementation of new free speech policies — such as banning masks at protests and encampments — is concerning. Gross said the state’s UAW 4811 union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the university over the ban on masks at protests.

“We have to continue to fight against this,” she said. “It’s scary to see campuses adopting these kinds of McCarthyist policies. This is a public university. These policies should not infringe on the public’s freedom of expression.”

Gross, who is currently working on his doctorate in literature, said the union will hold a meeting in early October so workers can discuss how to respond.

Despite these upheavals, she is eager to get back into the rhythm of the school year.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to a schedule and being in a place where I can see my colleagues and students again,” she said.

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