UC Santa Cruz welcomes new students amid tension over protests, budget cuts

This week, thousands of fresh faces arrived at the campus nestled in the redwoods before the start of a new academic year at UC Santa Cruz on Thursday.  

For some students, staff and faculty, the excitement of a new school year is mixed with concerns about a budget shortfall and layoffs, new free-speech policies, continued tension over protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, labor disputes and student housing conditions and availability. 

Fourth-year student Nicholas Robles, vice president of student life for the undergraduate student government, told Lookout he’s looking forward to organizing social events while also feeling a lot of anger alongside other students toward the university. 

He said some students who were arrested at the Gaza solidarity encampment in May are still recovering from how the university responded by banning them temporarily from campus – where many lived, and many couldn’t attend their graduation. 

“I’m hearing that a lot of students have been kind of outraged,” he said. “Last year, students lost housing, lost their graduation. Students lost their food accessibility – their basic needs like showering, and they also got really physically hurt and mentally scarred.” 

Still, Robles said he and many others are looking forward to the start of a new year. This year, the campus is welcoming about 5,700 new undergraduate students. Total undergraduate enrollment will remain about the same as last academic year at around 17,800. Of the total undergrad and graduate students, about 9,000 students are living in on-campus housing.  

UCSC is touting construction of a new family student housing complex near the base of campus, and is gearing up for a 60-year anniversary celebration in 2025. 

Robles said right now he’s focused on creating excitement for the new year and new students. 

“I’m trying to plan fun student events, like movie nights, dance nights and just like mingling events for students so that they can meet each other and feel less pressure of ‘how do I talk and how do l make friends on campus?” he said. 

Some faculty members similarly share a mix of emotions about the new year. Astronomy and astrophysics professor Andy Skemer said he’s really looking forward to teaching his classes and taking 10 students on a field trip to the Lick Observatory this week. 

This is his fifth year hosting the trip to the telescopes located on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose. He described one of the projects the students participate in, watching Pluto’s position change.

“We observe the sky on two consecutive nights, and the stars all stay in the same position,” he said. “And Pluto, because it’s a planet that’s orbiting – or used to be a planet – the sun, it moves a little bit in the sky from one night to the next. So you’ll take a picture, and you’ll see a whole bunch of dots. Almost all of them are stars. One of them is Pluto, but you wouldn’t know it. And then when you observe the next night, one of the dots moves, and then, you know it’s Pluto.”

But as the new year starts, Skemer said he is also concerned about the university’s finances. 

Chancellor Cynthia Larive said in a statement earlier this month that it’s one of the university’s biggest challenges. UCSC finished the 2024 fiscal year with a $107 million deficit in its core funds budget. 

“In light of our budget situation, I will not be accepting a salary increase this year, including the 4.2% increase that was disbursed to our policy-covered employees in July,” she wrote in a statement. 

Chief Financial Officer Ed Reiskin told Lookout in early August that the university would likely have to implement layoffs. About two weeks after that, Larive announced that layoffs were underway.

“It seems like there’s still a lot of uncertainty about how the campus is going to right this ship,” said Skemer. “I’m worried about what will happen if positions are left unfilled, or if there are layoffs – the staff here do so much already. But we’re wearing them thin.” 

Chris Connery, spokesperson for the faculty union, added he’s concerned about the budget and how it will impact the work environment for the entire campus community. 

Also on the mind of many faculty, Connery told Lookout last week, is the unfair labor practice charge the statewide faculty association filed against University of California administrators last week with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB). The statewide faculty association, along with seven other UC campus associations, accuse the university of violating free-speech rights of faculty in how they handled the protests last spring. 

“The faculty association in general thinks that the university went over the line in suppressing, discouraging and reacting to protests,” said Connery. He said faculty members are looking for clarification from administrators about the university’s respect for free speech and the rights of faculty. 

Graduate student worker Rebecca Gross said it’s been an exhausting summer, but she’s excited to see her students and coworkers again. As the unit chair of the union representing academic student employees, United Auto Workers Local 4811, she spent a lot of the summer organizing from the fallout of the encampment protests and a UAW strike last school year. 

Last spring, UAW workers went on strike over how UC administrators responded to Gaza solidarity encampments at multiple campuses. A judge issued a restraining order forcing workers to end their strike, and the labor relations board is still considering an unfair labor practice charge over whether the strike was lawful. 

Gross said the university has responded to the strike by garnishing the pay of workers from across the UC campuses. 

“For some people, it was close to $2,000 – we were on strike for three weeks,” she said. “So if they’re trying to get us to pay back the entire, the entirety of the three weeks, it would range from $1,500 to over $2,000 depending on what pay scale people are at.” 

She added that the UC’s implementation of new free-speech policies – like banning masking at protests and encampments – is concerning. Gross said the statewide UAW 4811 union filed an unfair labor-practice charge against the university regarding the masking ban during protests.

“We just need to keep fighting back against that,” she said. “It’s scary to see the campuses adopt these sort of McCarthyist policies. It’s a public university. The policies shouldn’t infringe freedom of speech for the public.”

Gross, who’s getting her doctoral degree in literature, said that the union will be holding a meeting in early October so workers can discuss how to respond. 

Despite that turmoil, she’s excited to get back into the rhythm of the school year. 

“I’m looking forward to getting back into a schedule and being in a place where I can see my coworkers and see my students again,” she said. 

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