Rising up from seats in classes all across campus, students will stage a walk out today at 11:30 a.m. to coincide with the National Day of Action for Education, Occupy EC protesters said.
The students will convene at the Ocuppy El Camino College camp on the Library Lawn, OECC organizer Daniel Osoy said.
The event was planned following a call to action on the Occupy Education California website, which asks instructors and students from all levels of education to participate.
“We refuse to accept educational re-segregation, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization,” the website’s statement reads.
OECC hopes to use the event to bring attention to issues specific to this campus.
“In general, the walkout is about the crisis in education” Osoy said, “More importantly, here at EC, we’re seeing the death of winter session.”
Last November, the board of trustees approved a resolution that opened the door to cancellation of winter session, an outcome Osoy said he hopes to avoid by raising student awareness of the upcoming March 12 board meeting.
“The hope to keep our winter session is not over,” Osoy said, “we’re trying to get students to rally, to put pressure on the administration to reconsider what they’re doing and how it affects students.”
OECC has invited several instructors to come to the Library Lawn today to offer tutoring to students missing their classes, Perry Petaccia, psychology major, said.
“We don’t want people to think this is just students cutting class,” Petaccia said.