VANCOUVER (CUP)—Hundreds of students stormed the University of British Columbia’s Old Administration Building Wednesday, with over 50 spending the night in the university president’s office.
At 9:30 a.m., 14 students opposed to the university’s proposal to increase tuition fees occupied the bottom floor of the building, where the board of governors’ chambers and the offices of the president and vice-presidents are located.
At approximately 11 a.m., campus security locked the doors and restricted staff access to the building. Most of the students, however, refused to leave.
At noon, close to 400 students rallied in front of the university’s student union building and marched to the Old Administration Building.
Julie Devaney, an organizer with a group called UBC Committee to Reduce Tuition, called on students to storm the locked building and join the few students who remained inside.
Shouting, “Push, push, push!” and “Let us in!,” protesters forced open the doors and swarmed in at about 12:15 p.m.
“We, the students of UBC, have taken the president’s office,” began a cry that was repeated by the hundreds of students who filled the entire first floor of the building.
Students called on the university to conduct an inquiry into the benefits of tuition increases and demanded the board of governors and president Martha Piper lobby the provincial government for increased education funding.
The purpose of the protests, said organizers, was to demonstrate student opposition to the university’s tuition-hike proposal, which was later passed as policy on Thursday.
“UBC’s always been the school that the media pays attention to, and when UBC seems complacent about an issue, the media tends to pitch it as all students are fine with it,” said Matt Lovick, a member of the university’s student association and spokesperson for the protesters.
“We thought we’d up the stakes and force [administrators] to admit that they’re going to do this anyway, even though students obviously don’t agree with this,” he said.
According to Lovick, the university ignored student disapproval of tuition increases during the university’s student consultation process and on last month’s Canadian Federation of Students’ “day of action.”
While some students spent the night in the building, others camped in tents outside.
Numbers dwindled as students left throughout the evening and others left the next morning to write midterms and go to classes, but at 11 a.m. on Thursday, the more than 20 students who remained in the building streamed out to join about 30 more who waited outside.
The group marched to the board of governors’ meeting, which had been moved from the Old Administration Building to UBC’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts because of the occupation.
