San Diego City College students and faculty protest fee hikes with "Ramen-In." Jim Miller photo

March 2, 2011, San Diego, and March 4, Los Angeles and San Francisco—San Diego City college students staged the first-ever “Ramen-in” at Governor Brown’s San Diego office on Wednesday, March 2, and LACC and SFCC students followed suit two days later. Students, faculty and their supporters protested the $300 fee increase the governor has proposed ($10 per unit for 30 units, a normal academic year’s load). “The $300 fee hike will come from students’ budget for food and other necessities. We will be eating Ramen for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said San Diego City College student Jose Rodriguez. “Hundreds of students will deliver thousands of packages of Ramen to the governor’s offices around the state to show the impact of this huge fee increase,” he predicted.

"On a campus like San Diego City College, it is clear that the fee increases will push many of our students out of higher education altogether," said Larissa Dorman, a member of the San Diego City College faculty.  It is devastating to think that we spend more on prisons than on higher education in this state. With one of the worst wealth distributions we have seen in the US since the Great Depression it is unconscionable that we would cut something as vital to democracy as education. The top 1% in California is getting $9 billion from the extension of the Bush tax cuts while students are forced to pay a poverty tax to help balance the budget. That fee increase goes to the general fund, not the community college system: students will literally be paying more for less,” said Dorman.

The protest in Los Angeles drew two hundred students and a swarm of television and radio reporters.  In San Francisco a more modest crowd of students staged the demonstration outside, and then spoke with an aide to the governor and state legislator Fiona Ma about the need for fair taxes to fund public education.  "It was a good discussion," according to SFCC AFT Local 2121 president Alisa Messer.  Click here for a report from San Francisco.