They could take a lesson from the UC regents. Mark Yudoff, who's the president of the UC system, takes home $600,000, although I have a hard time believing that he's busier than, say, the president of the USA who is only paid 2/3 of that amount.

The Cal State football coach gets an annual salary of $2.8 million, and the university is spending $430 million on improving their football stadium. I kind of sympathize with Berkeley students who wonder how there is so much money for this but janitors and security staff are losing their jobs. I suppose sports brings in the alumni $$$ or something, but frankly I fail to see why universities are involved with a sport famous for the number of players who suffer permanent brain damage.

Across the table from the protesters sits the UC Berkeley administration and the UC Berkeley campus police. Rehiring the custodians is the only immediate action for which the administration has authority - the administration lacks authority over the fee increase. Even the Regents (board of governers of the whole University of California system) have very little authority to do much about the fee increases. Yes, they had to act to impose them but it appears that too a large extent they had no other choice other than to become protesters themselves (and essentially have the UC system violate the law and/or various contracts).

The solidarity with the janitors arises because UC staff are suffering about as badly as the students. There is a recent history here of mutual solidarity.

Meanwhile, national news is now carrying the story about the 32% fee increase and its consequences.

I found it amusing that "lowering or renegotiating tuition" wasn't one of their demands... since that was the reason they gave for organizing the protest.

Also, totally amazed that Berkeley is only $10k/semester. For some reason I assumed it was like twice that. I often forget that it's a public school, since it so often gets lumped in with private schools like Harvard/Stanford/MIT.

Their second demand was amnesty, so they kind of had the right idea. Sort of. Of course they all got arrested anyhow. What kind of revolutionary asks for amnesty? Not exactly History Will Absolve Me material