Picking out certain in-sensitivities in her language is perhaps a way to discredit her neutrality; however, it does not serve to counter her general claim which I have only seen you agree with. (The claim, of course being, that this unfortunate circumstance is due to California’s budget crisis. )

We can talk about Raffi’s rhetoric and the rhetoric in your response for an eternity. It doesn’t change the fundamental disconnect in the logic of the protest the Friday before last.

I think it is important for students to be able to protest, and I agree with you the university belongs to the public. However, the lack of a cohesive message was a crucial misstep for those organizing the protest. The protest turned into “lets complain about everything we don’t like,” with people often protesting, in my opinion, contradictory ideologies. Combine this with irresponsible disruption of academics, which is an innocent bystander and the reason we all go to Cal, I cannot help but agree with Raffi’s intuition that the protest reeked of a “mob-mentality.”

As to her use of “illogical sense of entitlement,” I think they were poorly chosen words, nothing more. In my opinion, she did not mean it as you interpreted it. The university belongs to the public. However, students at Cal have this misconception that they own the university, and that everything Mark Yudof or the Channcelor decide to do should act in their benefit. This is severely false. The public owns the university. Once again: the public owns our university. Decisions are made to benefit the entire state, not to benefit us. Of course, we are a subset of the public, and thus decisions must equally balance what is best for us with the rest of the state.

Also, I have heard that a third of student increases are going to financial aid- while I do not know the numbers well enough to address whether this helps those that cannot afford a UC education, I find it odd that you do not address it, and furthermore claim that the tuition hikes will prevent the public from getting an education.