Sacramento State students who held a three-day sit-in before being ousted by police early Saturday morning are protesting again today on the campus quad.
They're holding a mock funeral to symbolize what they see as the death of their education by state budget cuts. And they're asking fellow students to sign a petition in support of last week's protest that evolved into a round-the-clock occupation of the Sacramento Hall administration building.
"The aggressive action to eject students from Sacramento Hall at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday morning was unnecessary because we had demonstrated our ability to be peaceful and cooperative for 62 hours," said student protester Yeimi Lopez, 21.
She and other students marched from the quad to the administration building today but found that it was locked. Campus spokeswoman Kim Nava said officials locked the building because they do not want students to launch another extended sit-in.
"We just can't have that situation again with all the health and liability issues," she said.
The university's response to the protest has cost $14,000 in overtime costs for police and facilities workers, Nava said. The campus is responding today to a rash of graffiti overnight that criticized recent cutbacks in classes brought on by budget cuts.
Students at Cal State Fullerton are also staging a sit-in inside the administration building of their campus. Today is their second day.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Call The Bee's Laurel Rosenhall at (916) 321-1083. Follow her on Twitter, @LaurelRosenhall.
• Read more articles by Laurel Rosenhall
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.