Breaking News: Victory for UPR Student Strikers
by Advocate Staff
After more than forty grueling days of strikes and campus occupations, students at the University of Puerto Rico have finally reached a tentative settlement with the University that meets all of their core demands.
On April 21, students took over all eleven campuses of the University of Puerto Rico system, effectively shutting down the university for the past two months. The strikes and occupations were called by students in protest against a series of proposed measures by the University that would have raised tuition by fifty percent, massively cut merit based scholarships, and further privatized the university.
Students negotiators are viewing the agreement as a victory for their cause, telling the Los Angeles Times that the university had agreed to all four of their central demands including:
“the continuation of tuition waivers for meritorious students, the cancellation of a planned special fee that would have raised the cost of study by 50 percent, the rejection of initiatives to privatize the university and a commitment not to enact summary sanctions against strike participants.”
The agreement protects all students, faculty, and staff who were involved in the strikes or who spoke out in favor of the strikes, against summary or retaliatory prosecution by the university.
The agreement comes after Judge José Negrón Fernández ordered arbitration negotiations between the two groups last Friday, June 11, and after the intervention of UPR trustee and former UPR president Norman Maldonado, who reportedly convinced Board of Trustees chair Ygrí Rivera to drop her insistent demands that striking students be punished.
The administration is waiting to hear back from the student occupiers, who are scheduled to debate and vote on the agreement this weekend.
For more information see The Puerto Rico Daily Sun
Thank you for covering this story. I hope CUNY students are reading…