C O N T E N T S
* “Puerto Rico students renew protests over tuition rise,” Reuters (December 22, 2010)
* “Puerto Rico Student Strike Intensifies, Public Education and Civil Rights at Stake” by Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D., San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (December 21, 2010)
* “A Welcome Change of Approach to University Strikes” By Dr. Brad R. Weiner. The Huffington Post (December 22, 2010)
* “Cuban National Assembly Expressed its Solidarity with Puerto Rican Students, ” Radio Cadena Agramonte (December 24, 2010)
* Open Letter to US Attorney General Holder on UPR Situation by Puerto Rican Scholars (December 16, 2010)
* National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights Press Release (December 22, 2010)

Puerto Rico students renew protests over tuition rise
Reuters (December 22, 2010)

SAN JUAN (Reuters) – Students in Puerto Rico kept up protests on Wednesday against a new fee at the U.S. Caribbean territory’s main public university after a week of demonstrations that led to arrests of several protesters.

The students are protesting a new $800 annual fee set to take effect in January and aimed at helping the University of Puerto Rico offset a budget deficit.

Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, has been mired in a deep recession since 2006 and Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno has cut spending and raised taxes on multinational firms operating on the island to reduce a $3.2 billion government deficit.

Dozens of student protesters gathered outside the university’s main campus on Wednesday, chanting slogans and singing songs.

The student protests had turned violent on Monday when a group threw rocks, bottles and smoke bombs inside classrooms as police used batons to break up the demonstration. At least 17 students were arrested in the melee.

Eight of those arrested appeared before judges late on Tuesday and two were charged with weapons violations and assault against public officials. The others were charged with misdemeanors including obstruction of justice.

The new fee comes on top of existing annual tuition costs of around $1,530.

However, critics of the university protests say a majority of students qualify for annual grants totaling $5,550, enabling students to absorb the cost of the new expense.

(Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Greg McCune)

Puerto Rico Student Strike Intensifies, Public Education and Civil Rights at Stake
by Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (December 21, 2010)

Listen to live coverage of the student strike from Puerto Rico on Radio Huelga: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/radiohuelga

Facebook updates: http://www.facebook.com/RadioHuelga

Video of police violence: http://www.primerahora.com/violenciaenlaupr-455182.html

Coincident with massive, at times explosive, student protests in Rome and London, University of Puerto Rico has again become a flashpoint with a student strike beginning Tuesday that turned the main campus into a militarized zone of police, riot squads, and SWAT teams, complete with low-flying helicopters and snipers. What began as a conflict over a steep student fee hike is now seen as a larger struggle to preserve public education against privatization.

Resistance to the imposed $800 student fee has triggered repressive state measures: police have occupied the main campus for the first time in 31 years and Monday the local Supreme Court, recently stacked by the pro-Statehood political party in power, outlawed student strikes and campus protests. More than 500 students defied the ruling by demonstrating on campus Tuesday, brandishing the slogan “They fear us because we don’t fear them” (“Nos tienen miedo porque no tenemos miedo”). This current strike revisits accords to negotiate the $800 fee, which in June ended a two-month shut down of 10 of 11 UPR campuses, as UPR faces a $240 million budget shortfall precipitated by the state not honoring its own debt to the institution.

Civil rights groups have declared a state of high alert in the wake of disturbances last week and statements by leading public officials seen as creating a hostile climate that inhibits free speech rights. In response, about 15,000 UPR supporters marched on Sunday from San Juan’s Capitol building to La Fortaleza governor’s mansion, under a balmy bright blue tropical sky in this U.S. Territory of about four million U.S citizens, though little known to most Americans beyond being a tourist destination.

In the standoff leading up to this week, top university officials have repeatedly threatened that a strike may prompt them to shut down the main campus at Río Piedras, which serves 20,000 plus students, employs about 1,200 professors and 5,000 non-teaching staff, and hosts millions in scientific research funding (system-wide the UPR serves about 65,000 students). In addition, 10 of 11 University of Puerto Rico campuses remain on probation by its accrediting agency, The Middle States Association, in the areas of long-term fiscal viability and effective administrative governance, of which the current student mobilization is a symptom, not a cause.

Tensions mounted last week leading up to a two-day student walkout when Capitol Security, a private security firm contracted by the university for $1.5 million, demolished entrance gates to the campus. Hired guards were young with little or no training or evaluation, bore no identification badges and some were armed with sticks and pipes in a climate of intimidation perhaps not seen since dockworkers strikes of the 1940s. Many of the guards had been recruited from marginalized Afro-Puerto Rican communities, such as Villa Cañona in Loíza, which has been the site of documented police abuses, lending a disturbing dimension of institutionalized racism, according to community leaders there.

Several violent incidents were reported, including a student who was seriously beaten and injured by guards. One video purportedly of students breaking security van windows was repeatedly aired in the local media as the justification for the police occupation of the campus, just as students had peacefully concluded the two-day walkout last Wednesday evening.

“UPR has a long history of infiltrators and saboteurs involved to instigate such incidents,” said William Ramírez, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The purported incident capped off a series of provocations. Gov. Luis Fortuño in a televised appearance openly declared that leftists would no longer be tolerated on the campus. His Chief of Staff Marcos Rodríguez Ema publicly taunted that students and professors who dare protest will get their asses kicked out (“vamos a sacarlos a patadas”).

The university administration has also designated areas limiting protests to outside the campus, and on Monday Chancellor Ana Guadalupe formally prohibited all protests or group activities of any type on the campus through January 15. The chancellor also issued an edict this week requiring all students to carry their student identification cards at all times.

According to Ramírez, Fortuño’s public statements targeting leftists, designated protest areas off campus and protest prohibitions are violations of constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights. The police presence and heavily-equipped riot squads also create a climate of intimidation that restricts expression, he added.

“Rather than responding to violence, they have created a violent environment,” Ramírez said, adding that under such conditions, in which a police occupation is deployed as a preemptive measure, “it is almost guaranteed that violence will occur.”

In response to the campus police presence, a majority in a meeting of about 300 professors Thursday voted to refuse to hold classes on campus while under siege, with senior professors recalling the trauma of deadly campus police violence during the last occupation in 1981. On Saturday, Police Chief José Figueroa Sancha announced plans for a permanent police precinct on the campus, using drug interdiction as the justification despite common knowledge that drug puntos or selling points operate a steady business a short distance from the university. Normally the campus operates with its own contingent of security guards.

Some student leaders who are not pro-strike have also voiced complaints about the police takeover of campus. Omar Rodríguez, Student Council president for the College of Education and founder and editor of the 30,000+ member-strong Facebook page Estudiantes de la UPR Informan, reported that he was attacked without provocation by private security guards and that the police stood by and laughed when he pleaded for their intervention.

“The exaggerated police presence is unnecessary and intimidating,” he said, adding that it was pedagogically absurd to expect students to concentrate properly on their studies in such an environment.

Making the best of these tensions, student strike leader Giovanni Roberto reached out to dialogue with Capitol Security guards in working-class solidarity. “They brought us the youth who are precisely the reason we are struggling, so that they could have access to the university,” he said.

It is estimated that the new $800 fee will force 10,000 UPR students to leave the university, though the state legislature and the Fortuño government have enacted last-ditch efforts to create funds for student jobs and scholarships. Numerous proposals from credible sources detailing fiscal alternatives to the fee seem to fall on deaf ears.

The strike itself has yet to build broad support, however. Widespread concern that a strike will jeopardize the institution’s survival has mobilized some against the strike, including students, despite majority opposition to the $800 fee. While students from other UPR campuses held walkouts or approved strikes, yet other campuses recently voted down such measures. And non-striking students at the Río Piedras campus, including previous strike leaders, signed a public proclamation to keep the campus open and classes running normally.

Nevertheless, strike organizers are gambling that the blunders of the administration will win support for the students as well as mobilize other groups. The largest professors’ organization, Asociación Puertorriqueña de Profesores Universitarios, and the non-teaching staff union, La Hermandad de Empleados No-Docentes, issued standard calls to members to respect pickets. And president of the UTIER electrical workers union, Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, issued a public call for support from Tuesday’s campus demonstration.

Whether or not this current conflict has the potential to destabilize the Fortuño administration depends in part on a broader context of economic well being. Fortuño and a legislative majority from the extreme right came to power with a broad mandate to punish the previous party in power for the worst economic downturn in decades, with no mid-term or recall elections in Puerto Rico as a check on current policies.

A self-described Reaganite, Fortuño has become a darling of the Republican Party for imposing highly unpopular austerity measures through legislation called Ley 7 (Law 7), laying off 20,000 public sector employees; targeting government agencies, including UPR, with crippling cuts aimed at perceived ideological enemies; and declaring null and void all public sector labor contracts for three years. Such a move, reminiscent of President Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers, should have stateside unions wary of Republican Party policy interest.

In fact the fee as a mechanism to destroy the social mission of the affordable public university of excellence was instituted by then Gov. Reagan at University of California, which saw a 32% fee increase last November and an additional 10% more recently, despite protests and arrests there.

It has also been reported that the Fortuño administration has already begun negotiations to sell off — or long-term lease — UPR campuses to private colleges, including those owned by major contributors to his campaign. And this just as a student loan default crisis associated with mediocre private colleges in the United States threatens to spiral into as costly a mess as the mortgage crisis.

The events unfolding cohere with the popular thesis of Canadian author Naomi Klein, known as “disaster capitalism.” However, students are mobilizing in Puerto Rico and worldwide around deep cuts to public higher education and subsequent privatization, in movements that may just be getting their first wind.

“From San Diego to Rome, from San Juan to London and Amsterdam, 2010 will be remembered as the year of student protests internationally,” commented Antonio Carmona Báez, Ph.D., a political science lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. “Not since 1968 have university students stood up around the globe — simultaneously — against authority, this time to save public education.”

Maritza Stanchich, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico.

A Welcome Change of Approach to University Strikes
By Dr. Brad R. Weiner
The Huffington Post (December 22, 2010)

A few days ago in this blog space, my colleague, Dr. Maritza Stanchich, posted an overview of yet another student strike at the University of Puerto Rico. Her viewpoint is clearly pro-strike and runs counter to the opinions of many University of Puerto Rico faculty, students, and employees. Allow me to present a different viewpoint of the same conflict.

The standard mechanism for student strikes at the University of Puerto Rico is to forcibly deny everybody else at the institution their rights to study, to teach, to work, and to do research. This mechanism is illegal on many levels. It denies others their basic civil rights. It violates University of Puerto Rico student regulations that clearly state students have no right to impede academic activities. It flies in the face of the university’s Non-Confrontation Policy that says no groups or individuals have the right to impede academic or administrative activities.

Student strikes are not protected under Puerto Rico’s laws because students do not have an employee-employer relationship with the university. In the numerous legal actions brought by the University of Puerto Rico in the Superior Court, and, most recently, before the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, the courts have ruled that student strikes are, in fact, illegal and are not a valid exercise of freedom of speech. The courts have ordered student strikers to cease and desist from their actions. For 25 years, the illegality of the strikes at every level has not led the university to be proactive about maintaining access to the campus. In the current case and as a part of the Open University Policy, the University of Puerto Rico administration has taken action by bringing in the state police to assure free access to the campus and to guarantee the rights of those who want to continue offering classes, taking classes, and doing their jobs.

During my 23+ years of employment at UPR, I have repeatedly been denied free access to my laboratory and my office, my places of work, by whichever group that chooses to violate my civil rights as a pressure point for their cause. In my younger assistant professor years, I just jumped the fence to go to work and avoid controversy. More recently, I have begun to fight for my rights. In 2005, ten professors (I was one) sued the university to guarantee our access to our laboratories. After winning a preliminary injunction in federal court, we settled our case with the university when the board of trustees emitted a certification guaranteeing that all campuses would be open, regardless of strikes. In the 62-day strike earlier this year, I was physically threatened, pushed, spit upon, and insulted by groups who tried to deny me access, but I insisted on my rights.

Contrary to what Dr. Stanchich portrays as a peaceful movement, this type of abuse and violence is routine during strikes at the University of Puerto Rico. Numerous student strikers hide their identities by covering their faces with hoods and masks, and they carry weapons, such as metal tubes, sticks with nails in them, baseball bats, and slingshots with lead pellets. Just last week, in an effort to disrupt normal activity and create terror, hooded students threw smoke bombs into classrooms filled with students. Following such incidents, and unlike prior occasions when such intimidation occurred, Puerto Rico police are now present, and they have ably maintained campus access for all university employees and students. For many years, I have waited for the university or the government of Puerto Rico to defend my civil rights. This is the first time they have done so. In that sense, I am very satisfied with the actions taken by the university administration.

Over the last 30 years, the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico has been moving towards becoming a first-rate research institution. It is beginning to succeed. According to the National Science Foundation’s latest data, 24% of Hispanics in the United States who obtain a PhD in Science, Mathematics or Engineering, passed through the University of Puerto Rico for some part of their education. The UPR-Río Piedras Strategic Plan, Vision 2016 — endorsed by all campus academic and administrative bodies — asserts the importance of research, knowledge creation, and scholarly activity. In keeping with that objective, the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras has grown its existing graduate programs, created new doctoral offerings, and expanded its external funding profile with federal agencies.

As required for research institutions, the university has a contractual obligation and responsibility to comply with federal and state laws governing research and laboratory operations, including the safe stewardship of highly specialized equipment, dangerous chemicals, and human and animal research. The university has acted correctly in bringing in the appropriate level of security to safeguard not only the interests of the institution and its constituents, but of the general public as well.

Many of the recent UPR student conflicts have received national and even international attention. As a result, my stateside colleagues invariably have many questions. I always try to carefully explain the issues. Inevitably, I get the following question: “How much do students at the University of Puerto Rico pay for tuition and fees?” My answer: $1200-$1500, depending on the number of credits. Per semester? No, per year. At that point, the discussion usually ends in disbelief because they cannot believe (1) how low the tuition and fees are, and (2) how it possibly can be an issue, given the cost of higher education everywhere else, including other institutions in Puerto Rico.

When we add to the equation the multiple sources of financial assistance available to UPR students, e.g. Pell Grants, student loans, etc., it should be clear that the issue of resources is not the primary reason for the student conflict. Of course, it goes without saying no one wants to increase the costs of education. Moreover, I fully understand some UPR students have difficulty paying the current modest tuition and will have even greater problems meeting the new $400 per semester fee. For that very reason, the government has created several special scholarship funds totaling more than $30 million dollars to address the needs of that sector.

With the awarding of over 300,000 degrees, the University of Puerto Rico has distinguished itself over the last 100+ years. UPR alumni from a wide range of academic disciplines have brought honor to the institution through their service to Puerto Rico and to the nation. Yet, today the institution is on the brink of losing its Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation and being de-certified for U.S. Department of Education Title IV funds.

The current situation at the University of Puerto Rico threatens not only the present and the future of the institution, but also the past. Alumni may soon find themselves with a degree from a non-existent university. I, personally, am proud to be an integral part of a public research institution that has made a difference in so many students’ lives. It would be a great tragedy to lose such a successful institution because a small minority cannot accept the will of the majority and the economic realities of the times. The time to put politics aside, analyze the real data, and reach the conclusion that serves the greater good has arrived.

Brad R. Weiner is Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

Cuban National Assembly Expressed its Solidarity with Puerto Rican Students
Radio Cadena Agramonte (December 24, 2010)

Havana, Cuba, Dec 23.- The Cuban National Assembly issued a declaration condemning the police repression against Puerto Rican students, and claiming for international solidarity with their cause.

The Juventud Rebelde newspaper published the declaration, which was signed by the commissions of Foreign Affairs, Education, Science and Culture, Youth and Childhood Care, and Women’s Equal Rights.

The document notes that, for several days, hundreds of students are protesting against increasing of the enrolment fees of the University of Puerto Rico, in Rio Piedras.

It states that these students have been the objects of violent repression by police; and many of them are wounded or arrested.

The declaration affirms that this is not an isolated event because in recent years, Puerto Rican students have protested against similar injustices.

It adds that, in view of such a violent response of the police, in complicity with the colonial authorities of that nation, it is vital to condemn their situation.

The document claims for the solidarity of all peoples, Human Rights Organizations, and Parliaments worldwide to demand the end of repression and safeguard the physical integrity of the demonstrators. (ACN)