More than 1,000 students and faculty walked out of classes on March 4, 2010 to protest a 30 percent tuition increase and 10 percent cuts in faculty wages.  This protest was part of a California State University-wide movement to show discontent with the recently executed tuition increase.

The protest followed a 2010 Associated Students proposal for a semestral $94 student body fee to fund the new student union. The protest was organized by students, faculty, staff and the California Faculty Association.

Students were asked to vote for this fee increase in the March 2010 A.S. elections, but the fee wouldn’t go into effect until the student union was complete.  This meant those students voted for whether or not today’s SDSU students would have to pay more.

“Asking students to vote for such a significant fee increase when most of the current students voting on the fee may not be here to actually pay the fee when it goes into effect is troublesome, bordering on the reviled ‘taxation without representation,’” as quoted in a staff editorial by The Daily Aztec on March 7, 2010.

Five months prior to the March protest, students organized a walkout in November to protest cuts to the art department and education budgets overall.  Even the Associated Students president at the time, Tyler Boden, joined the movement with students, faculty and staff.

In March 2010, more than 50 percent of the student body voted “yes” in favor of building the new student union.  Tuition today is almost $2,000 more than it was then.

File photo