UCI Library Study-in Feb. 19th

IRVINE, California – Need a place to study? Need a place to sleep?

Study-in/sleepover at Langson Library

MEET AT 4:00PM FRIDAY – MAIN LOBBY (INSIDE)
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 8:00PM FRIDAY – MAIN LOBBY

During the last budget cuts, Library funding was cut disproportionately to other units. And next year, the libraries will likely be cut further. As a result, our libraries are open less than at most comparable schools around the country. We need our libraries to be open more. We need access to books, we need places to study and work. Our administrators CHOSE to cut library funding, they know we want more, yet they are ignoring us.

Help keep your library open! Come for a night of:
teach-ins, workshops, tutoring, study groups, videos, TA and professor office hours, food, games, and a midnight dance party!!

Bring a sleeping bag or blanket, books, games, food to share, and your friends! You don’t need permission to use your library–plan your own activities!

UCI belongs to us, let’s take it back!

Tentative schedule
Friday
before 4:45pm – gather inside
5:00pm-12:00am – Films and tutoring
5:00pm – Faculty teach-in
6:00pm – AB 540/DREAM Act
6:30pm – History of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, and the recent arrests
7:30pm – Campus workers and the campaign to insource janitors
8:00pm – General Assembly: plan for March 4th day of action and beyond
12:00am – study break, main lobby or library/Gateway courtyard (games and music)

Other teach-ins:
Anti-Olympics Resistance
Fighting Nazis in Orange County and Los Angeles

Saturday
all day – tutoring
11:00am – Brunch/Lunch, faculty talk
5:00pm – Study-in will either end or continue another night

Tutoring:
Math, Physics, Earth Systems Science, Film, Theater, Spanish, Writing, Criminology/Law, Portuguese, Sociology, Anthropology, and more!

update from occupyUCI:

At 5pm, students, workers, and faculty began a study-in at Langson Library on the UC Irvine campus.  Among the demands were longer library hours and increased transparency in the budget.  While the library was scheduled to close at 5pm, the university administration quietly increased the hours to 11pm the day before.  While the increase in hours is a victory in itself, the terms of the victory were dictated by administration, so students went ahead with their plans.

Police maintained a constant presence inside, with 3 police officers and a handful of student traitors CSOs patrolling the library the entire night.  The Reserves/Loan desk by the 2nd floor entrance was staffed by the cops, who gave decent advice on books about constitutional law (just kidding!).  Beginning with two spoken-word performances, including a moving poem about the plight of undocumented students, teach-ins covered the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, meritocracy and the SATs, the DREAM Act, and the campaign to insource janitors (currently contracted by ABM).  A General Assembly was held, and resulted in several concrete proposals for March 4 organizing, including a week-long People’s Park event in Aldrich Park on campus.

At 11:15pm, with about 10 police, a few library administration, and a handful of student traitors cops present, the study-in was evicted.  Students decided to take the victory and live to fight another day.  On the way out, students showed a police officer his photo on pg. 13 of After the Fall, and he and his buddies had a good laugh (even though the photo was right above an article titled “The Beatings Will Continue”).  The police occupied Langson Library for a half hour.  After they left, students held an impromptu dance party in the library plaza area in the rain.

If we can’t dance, this isn’t our revolution.

Below is a statement written by students, before the administration offered their unsolicited permission to stay inside.

Today, we are taking over Langson Library. We do this not as a protest, but as a solution to a number of issues resulting from our administration’s incompetence and malfeasance, centering around their belief that they can appropriate students’ fees and workers’ labor power for their own purposes, without consulting in any genuine way those people most affected.

This includes:

• Mistreatment of janitors, groundskeepers, student workers, teaching assistants, office staff, and lecturers by cutting pay and benefits and demanding more work; this is done to free up more resources for construction projects and corporate and military research.
• Increase in student fees while slashing services and programs, particularly those services benefitting low-income and first-generation students and those programs best equipped to understand and counter oppression in society.
• Attempts by administration to delude and co-opt our student governments, newspapers, and student body as a whole. Since the cuts were announced, they have consistently lied to shift blame elsewhere while secretly cutting desirable programs for absolutely no economic gain. In the most extravagant show of the disingenuous nature of the administration, in order to subvert a similar library study-in last quarter, Manuel Gomez claimed credit for increasing library hours, only to revert the hours a week later. Even in their supposed benevolence, they still reaffirm their power to decide unilaterally how to use our money.
• Finally, our administration has refused to release budget documents for public scrutiny and audit and continue to conduct budget talks in secret. There is no legitimate reason for our money and the results of our labor to be allocated so clandestinely, without our knowledge, and without public oversight.

We are not just calling for increased library hours, but for full transparency of UC budgets and the budgeting processes. We aren’t satisfied with token student representation in the budget junta, and thus we demand full student and worker control over the budget. Absolutely no budget decisions should be finalized for next Fall without ratification by the entire campus community.

Our administration has operated for years with full impunity, with the complicity of ASUCI, AGS, and sectors of the faculty; thus, we expect no support from the administration for our objectives until the continuation of this system becomes politically untenable. This action is not the first taken by this movement, nor shall it be its culmination; we will continue to escalate in opposition to our administration until students and workers are given control over our university.

Signed,
Students and Workers of UCI