The University of California at Berkeley has been known for protesting and standing up for what they believe in since the 1960’s, and this trend continues as a 10-day hunger strike on the campus just ended recently. Most of the people in the hunger strike were UC Berkeley students, and they have been camping outside the administration building on campus since May 3. This particular protest at UC Berkeley was in response to the new immigration law in Arizona, which gives police the right to question people which they believe are in the country illegally. These protesters have a number of demands, one of which was UC Berkeley publicly denounce the law. This happened last Friday, and may have been the tipping point leading to protesters stopping their protest.
UC Berkeley protesters’ other demands were not met right away, but a meeting was agreed upon with Chancellor Robert Birgenau. Other demands on the list were declaring the UC Berkeley campus a sanctuary for undocumented people, having administrators drop charges against students who were disciplined in campus wide demonstrations last fall, and suspending the student code of conduct and committing to nonviolence during student protests. As it stands now, protesters will have to work out things with Birgenau when they meet with him to discuss the issues which they were protesting. Protesters still feel like it was a win, as they drew a lot of attention to Arizona’s passage of SB 1070 and HB 2281 as an unjust law.
Tags: Chancellor Robert Birgenau, UC Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley
