Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

UC Berkeley students walk by Sather Tower on the UC Berkeley campus April 17, 2007

Updated Nov. 28, 2011, 4:04 p.m.

A group of protesters frustrated with tuition hikes and campus police tactics disrupted a meeting Monday of the University of California Board of Regents.

The meeting was the regents’ first since UC police thrust batons at Berkeley protesters and pepper-sprayed students at Davis. The board spent nearly three hours listening to public comment about those incidents and about the impacts of tuition increases on students.

As regents closed public comment and tried to continue with their meeting, more than 50 students and faculty sitting in the back suddenly rearranged their chairs into a circle and loudly chanted for the regents to "please join our meeting."

"The students, faculty and staff of the UC system are prepared to make change from the bottom up, we aren't going anywhere," one protester shouted.

Police looked on nervously as the regents fell silent, unable to continue with their meeting. Regent Russell Gould pleaded with protesters to let regents continue their meeting.

"We are asking regents to join us," one protester yelled. "This is what democracy looks like."

Bowing to protesters, the half dozen regents attending the meeting at the UCSF campus, with the exception of Lieut. Gov. Gavin Newsom, then temporarily adjourned the meeting and left the room.

Protesters then cheered as Newsom calmly walked to the back of the room to listen.

The demonstrators took turns railing against a litany of student burdens, including mounting debt, grim job prospects, meager wages and alleged police brutality. Protesters held a large banner aloft declaring "Regents Are Part of the 1%"

"There is something that separates us from the regents," said Doug Buckwald, a middle school teacher who graduated from UC, Berkeley, in 1981. "It's money," he shouted, waving a dollar bill.

Newsom looked on silently, his face stern, fingers clasped over his knee, as protesters chanted in a call and response pattern for nearly an hour. When protesters asked him to sign their petition calling for state lawmakers to close corporate tax loopholes among other initiatives, he politely declined, explaining that he had "an absolute aversion to pledges."

"You have my support for every specific principle, I think it's a lot better than any signature," Newsom said, adding that he was strategizing with Gov. Jerry Brown on various tax reforms.

After a one-hour delay, UC regents reconvened their teleconference in a small room down the hall from the cavernous conference room at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, leaving the protesters to continue their discussion, alone. Only a few students were permitted to attend the regents meeting after it readjourned.

The restriction prompted an outcry from protesters. Their chants traveled down the hall, past a half dozen UC police, outside the room where UC regents huddled over budget issues and salary increases.

"They don't support free speech," said Pablo Gaston, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, who stood with other protesters. "They are clearly keeping us out."

"I am very sorry that a small group of students, about 20, decided to disrupt our meeting," said Sherry Lansing, the board chair.

Before they left the small room, the regents voted unanimously to ask the state to increase its funding for the 2012-13 fiscal year to $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion.

The regents also approved salary hikes for more than half a dozen administrators, including a 9.9 percent increase for Meredith Michaels, vice chancellor of planning and budget at UC Irvine, whose annual salary will increase to $247,275 from $225,000.

Six campus attorneys also received salary increases. The largest of those (21.9 percent) went to Steven A. Drown, chief campus counsel and associate general counsel at UC, Davis. His yearly salary will increase to $250,000 from $205,045.

Regents said the salary increases were necessary to attract and retain talented employees. 

When the board began meeting Monday morning, Mark Yudof, the university president and a regent, reiterated the board’s commitment to peaceful protests and its “antipathy to tuition increases."

Hundreds of people crowded rooms at four different UC campuses, including UC Davis, UC Merced, UCLA, and UCSF, to address the board. In San Francisco, many held signs that read “Make Banks Pay."

Over and over again, students called for an end to tuition hikes and an increase in spending on higher education. Some also called for the reform of Proposition 13 and a tax on the 1 percent.

"The regents have to revisit the free speech policies here at Berkeley," said Angelica Salceda, 26, a second-year law student at UC Berkeley who attended the UCSF regents' meeting. "Now we have dual events: the rising cost of tuition and of students being beat up at the hand of UC police."

Regents repeatedly try to assure protesters they were opposed to tuition increases.

"None of us want to raise tuition," Lansing said. "It was never our intention to consider such an increase now. We strongly believe that the state should make our great university affordable for all Californians."

Demonstrators applauded when Assembly Speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles), who is also a member of the board, described himself as a "believer in the Master Plan."

“It’s appalling that we have gone down the route of charging for education-related services,” he said, while acknowledging the recession's effects on the state's budget. “It’s a reality that given the economic conditions that we have to charge what we charge.”

Lansing told Perez "we are looking for your help" to prevent future cuts.

Many of the speakers identified themselves as members of unions representing the university’s graduate students. They called on the regents to sign a pledge authored by ReFund California, a coalition of labor groups to “make the 1% fund public education.”

"We want the regents to sign a pledge that they will support closing tax loopholes and roll back Proposition 13 to provide more funding for education," said Jia Ching Chen, a graduate student in urban planning at UC, Berkeley who is a member of Refund California, which presented a copy of the pledge to Yudof on Monday.

Adi Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

UC President Mark Yudof receives a pledge from ReFund California supporters at a UC Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 28, 2011.

Charlie Eaton, financial secretary for the students' employee union at UC Berkeley, suggested that the regents look inward.

"You have responded by having us beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested," Eaton said. "The buck stops with you.... you are the corporate and financial elite... Monica [Lozano], are you going to ask the board at the Bank of America to pay more taxes in California? Russell Gould, will you do the same with your former colleagues at Wells Fargo?"

Since the clashes between campus police and protesters earlier this month, Yudof launched an investigation into the pepper-spraying incident and a system-wide review of police policies and practices and the chancellors of Davis and Berkeley issued apologies.

Some of the speakers at the regents meeting called for the resignations of Linda Katehi, the UC Davis chancellor, and Robert Birgeneau, the UC Berkeley Chancellor.

Katehi was present at the meeting in Davis, where many protesters held signs that said “Katehi Resign.” More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for her to leave.

Birgeneau told the regents that UC Berkeley administrators support students' First Amendment rights to free speech, and urged campuses to "exercise restraint when responding to peaceful protests."

"We are outraged about the use of force that we have seen against members of the UC Davis and Berkeley community," Birgeneau said.

On Monday morning, about an hour before the regents meeting began, the union representing UC Berkeley officers released a letter “to open the door to a better understanding” between police and the university community.

“It was not our decision to engage campus protesters on November 9th. We are now faced with 'managing' the results of years of poor budget planning. Please know we are not your enemy,” the letter read.

But the union disagreed with the students’ contention that the protests were not violent. “Not caught on most videos were scenes of protesters hitting, pushing, grabbing officers’ batons, fighting back with backpacks and skateboards,” the union wrote.

While the union said it supports the investigation and the review of police practices, the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which represents professors, sent a letter to Yudof objecting to the hiring of the Kroll Security Group to lead the UC Davis investigation.

The faculty association questioned whether the investigation would be “truly independent,” because the university had previously hired the company to “provide security services.”

“By deepening UC’s links to Kroll, you would be illustrating the kinds of connection between public higher education and Wall Street that the Occupy UC movement is protesting,” the letter read.

But Newsom, who is also a regent, defended Yudof's decision to hire Kroll, and its chairman, William Bratton, to lead the investigation into police tactics at UC Davis.

"We can't wait," Newsom said. "We have to move. It was right to look for outside counsel."

Yudof dismissed criticisms of the contracts with Kroll. "I don't see any conflict. You may, I don't," he told the audience.

Yudof said he had asked former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, an emeritus professor of law at UC Davis, to chair the task force to ensure a thorough investigation into police tactics.

The regents canceled a previously scheduled meeting over what it described as the threat of violence from “rogue” Occupy Cal protesters. Monday’s meeting was held via teleconference.

Some student lamented the regents’ decision to hold the meeting at a distance.

"It's unfortunate they cancelled that meeting," said Bahar Navab, president of UC, Berkeley's Graduate Assembly, which represents 11,000 graduate students. "What kind of public comment is it when you are talking into a camera? This disperses that energy that students had.”

Roughly 76 police from the UC Police Department and the San Francisco Police Department were assigned to attend the meeting at UCSF Mission Bay. They were not dressed in riot gear, but had it ready if need be," according to the UC police.

UC regents decided to extend the public comment period by a half hour to accommodate the crush of students waiting to speak.

Still, a handful of students milling about in the chilly air outside the UCSF meeting complained that UC police were restricting their right to free speech after not allowing them in because the room was full.

Among them was Matt Wade, 31, who is earning his Ph.D. in city planning at UC, Berkeley.

"They're still trying to be restrictive," Wade said. "The state and the regents need to stop blaming each other. There's plenty of money out there, it just needs to be correctly appropriated."

Lansing said while she regretted that the regents would not have time to hear from every protester at the meeting, she vowed to visit various campuses over the next few weeks to hear students' concerns.

Yudof promised to "do our best to carry out many of the suggestions that students are making."

More than 380 faculty and students turned out Monday afternoon to call on the UC administration to repudiate police brutality and develop policies to ensure peaceful demonstrators are treated appropriately.

In a standing room only meeting of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, faculty considered a resolution that condemned the administration's authorization of the use of force against docile protesters. The measure also called on UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other top administrators to "take responsibility for" harsh police tactics used over the last two years, and develop policies to prevent such practices from continuing.

In a brief appearance before faculty at the International House at Cal, Birgeneau said he regretted that "the normal process" of communication among UC Berkeley administrators had failed on Nov. 9.

He also lamented sending a letter in which he sought to justify police tactics, saying that linking arms was " not nonviolent" behavior.

"I suspect that we are all either embarrassed or angered by the events of Nov. 9," George Breslauer, executive vice chancellor at UC Berkeley, told faculty.