[News] Students Resume Protests Against Fees at U of Puerto Rico

[Anti-Imperialist News]

February 8, 2011


Students Resume Protests Against Fees at U. of Puerto Rico

http://chronicle.com/article/Students-Resume-Protests/126299/

By Lauren Sieben

Student activists at the University of Puerto 
Rico at Río Piedras, the system's flagship campus 
in San Juan, have resumed their protests over a 
tuition surcharge in recent months, following a 
two-month student strike last spring that shut down the university.

On Monday students marched through the campus in 
protest of an $800 special fee that they said 
threatened the university's accessibility to 
low-income students. Although the demonstrations 
proceeded peacefully, several protests in the 
past few months have culminated in violent 
confrontations between students and police 
officers, according to local reports.

Students participating in the march, which was 
organized by the Student Representation 
Committee, demanded that the university repeal 
the fee and eliminate the police presence on the campus.

In June 2010, the university reached an 
<http://chronicle.com/article/Student-Leaders-Agree-to-End/65983/>agreement 
with student-government leaders after a two-month 
strike over a proposed change in tuition 
exemptions. Part of the settlement required that 
the university not demand the $800 fee until 
January 2011, instead of last fall. Students 
protested the fee again in December. The extra 
charge is intended to compensate for the 
university's budget deficit of roughly 
$70-million, according to the 
<http://www.prdailysun.com/news/Rep-Silva-Cruz-meets-with-UPR-prez-on-deficit>Puerto 
Rico Daily Sun.

José Ramón de la Torre, president of the 
University of Puerto Rico, released a statement 
Monday acknowledging that enrollment for the 
spring semester has dropped by 5,184 students 
systemwide, a drop of about 8 percent in the 
64,000-student system. He added that the 
university has received 3,044 applications for December graduation.

"Statistics show that about 6 to 11 percent is 
the usual reduction for the second academic 
semester at UPR, although this tends to increase 
when there are student conflicts," he said in the report.

After the two-day protest in December, during 
which protesters purportedly became violent, the 
police took over the Río Piedras campus for the 
first time since 1981. Gabriel E. Laborde, a 
recent graduate and a former student-government 
president who helped organize the protests last 
spring, said that several demonstrators attacked 
other students with smoke bombs when they refused 
to leave their classrooms during that 48-hour strike.

"The strikes turned violent, unlike the ones we 
had during the spring," he said. "It's bad for 
the image of the students of Puerto Rico. It divided the students."

The newspaper Claridad reported that during a 
demonstration on January 27, police officers 
pushed students into the pavement; applied 
pressure-point techniques to the backs of their 
necks, under their eyes, and on their temples and 
throats; and sexually assaulted some female 
students. Other reports stated that the police 
used rubber bullets and tear gas while arresting demonstrators.

María Mercedes Carruthers, a senior and a 
delegate to the student-representation committee, 
says she was hit and badly bruised by a police 
officer, who pushed her onto the ground during a 
recent strike. "Right now we have all the 
special- task-force units at our university, 
supposedly looking out for the infrastructure of 
the university," she said. "They've relocated all 
these police officers from the most dangerous areas on the island."

Varying estimates suggest that more than 100 
students have been arrested in the recent 
protests. Gamelyn Oduardo, a third-year law 
student, was arrested January 13 during a rally 
on campus. He was charged with aggression to a 
police officer, an accusation that he said was 
"totally false," and spent 12 hours in jail 
before being released after a preliminary court 
hearing. The police have 60 days to appeal the 
judge's decision, Mr. Oduardo says.


Moratorium on Protests

Ana R. Guadalupe Quiñones, chancellor of Río 
Piedras, issued a moratorium on all student 
demonstrations until the campus stabilizes, 
according to people on campus and Primera Hora. 
The chancellor did not respond to interview requests.

Students still demonstrated on Monday, however, 
and the event went peacefully. Ms. Carruthers 
said that more than 800 students participated in 
the march on the Río Piedras campus.

"The students basically see this as a victory," 
she said. "No one was arrested, there were no 
acts of vandalism. We were able to demonstrate solidarity."

University clerical workers also took part in 
Monday's demonstration, said Ms. Carruthers, 
forming a human chain around students who were at 
one point encircled by police officers.

Manuel Gómez, director of the campus's Resource 
Center for Science and Engineering and a 
principal investigator with the Institute of 
Functionalized Nanomaterials, said the $800 fee 
is a "nonissue," and he doesn't understand why students are still protesting.

Mr. Gómez said he had lost four tenured 
professors because of interruptions from student 
protests over the past year. The losses have 
caused "permanent damage" that he said would set 
his research back by at least 10 years.

University officials "called the police so we 
could enter and do our work," he said. "Nobody 
wants the police here, but all the students have 
to do is stop interrupting and disrupting, and 
the police will walk out the campus."

Mr. Gómez said he has considered retiring because 
he "can't see any future if this anarchy 
continues." He hopes the chancellor's moratorium 
on student demonstrations will have some effect 
on the protesters at Río Piedras.

"She has a clear vision of how she has to balance 
the students' right to protest and the right of 
those students who want to work," he said. "You 
have to balance the two, otherwise you won't have a university."




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