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Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.

A little bit of background: The UC system comprises of 10 campuses and has about 220,000 students, while the CSU system is made up of 23 campuses and has about 440,000 students. The decision making body for the UC System is the UC Regents which has a similar structure to the governing body for the CSU system, the CSU Board of Trustees. The UC Regents is a 26 member body while the CSU BOT is a 25 member body. Both reserve seats for elected officials, including Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Tom Torlakson, and John Perez. The majority of each body is appointed by the governor and approved by the state senate.

With tuition in the CSU system now at over $5,000 a year, and UC tuition at over $11,000, student activism, perhaps ineffective at stemming the rise in education costs, has led to major demonstrations across California campuses even prior to the Occupy movement.

Multiple major protests at UC Berkeley in 2009 saw thousands of students protest, and violent confrontations with police during the occupation of a campus building.

Another notable event was the 2010 March 4th protest at California State University Northridge (CSUN), which saw an estimated 7,000 people in the streets surrounding the campus. It was also the birth of the CSUN 6, which was comprised of 5 students that were arrested during the demonstration, and a 73 year old Native American Studies professor who had her arm broken by LAPD. The court cases that followed tempered the campus and has lead to a calm and circumspect response from the administration, especially now that the Occupy protests have taken root on California campuses.

This is in stark contrast to what happened throughout the UC system, as chancellor of UC Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau pre-emptively banned encampments from campus. This led to the breaking of student ribs at UC Berkeley on November 9th, the arrest of 13 UCLA students for failure to disperse, and the now infamous UC Davis pepper spray incident that occurred on November 18th.

President of the UC system Mark Yudof then called in former LAPD police chief William Bratton to conduct an investigation, and Governor Jerry Brown called for an examination of the use of force against non-violent protestors specifically within the UC system. On top of this, a backlash at Davis has focused around demanding the resignation of the chancellor of UC Davis, Linda Katehi.

Even though the structures are different and it may feel that the UC system has historically been the flagship for student activism, the CSU system has a rich history that is often overshadowed.

It is this rich tradition that has seen Occupy CSU Humboldt encamped on their campus since October 1st (making it one of the longest lasting and continuous occupations in the nation); and Occupy CSU Northridge since November 14th.

As a member of Occupy CSUN, I have personally been involved in multiple meetings with campus administration, which has taken a respectful approach to the rights of student protestors. Other campuses across the CSU system have been holding demonstrations, protests, and general assemblies, but it is at the Humboldt and Northridge campuses that the traditionally confrontational role of campus administration verse students has been overcome.

The relationship has not been perfect, and administration does want to bring an end to the overnight aspect of the occupation at CSUN, but one of the reasons that CSU Northridge has been able to come together as a campus — as administration, staff, faculty, and students — is partially due to the growth that came from the CSUN 6, but also because we have recognized that academia as a whole needs to come together to defend education from corrupt and incompetent politicians who would rather invest in prisons than in education.