Hundreds of UC Davis students, faculty and staff offered up a chant as a loud lesson on Sept. 24, the fall quarter’s first day of instruction: “Whose university? Our university!”

But “our university,” they said, is slipping away as state government slashes UC funding by millions of dollars, as student fees go up and class offerings go down, as most employees are furloughed or given temporary layoffs, and as some faculty see a threat to their role in shared governance.

An unknown number of students and faculty boycotted classes. At noon, more than 500 students, faculty and union members rallied on the Quad. The union participants included members of the Union of Professional and Technical Employees, or UPTE, which had called a one-day strike.

Then they marched, in lesser number, from the Quad, past the Silo and into Mrak Hall, the university’s main administration building. They did it peacefully for the most part, except when they crammed into the Mrak lobby and up the lobby staircase to the second floor, making noise for about 15 minutes.

From Mrak they marched across campus to the Chancellor’s Residence, where they rallied (and had lunch) on a circle of grass across the street — as police officers stood nearby.

Nearly 200 faculty members had posted their names on the UC Faculty Walkout Web site, signaling support for the job action. The Web site drew more than 1,200 signatures from around the system, in protest of UC’s handling of the budget crisis and in particular the university’s prohibition on faculty taking their mandatory, unpaid furlough time on teaching days.

Faculty cited two reasons for wanting to take furlough time on teaching days: to demonstrate to the public how the budget crisis is directly affecting students, and to safeguard some of the days that faculty members set aside for mandatory research and public service.

However, the UC Office of the President opted to preserve instruction time, saying students already were challenged by higher fees, fewer class offerings and larger class sizes.

‘Classrooms were packed’

Students made choices of their own on Sept. 24: Go to class, as Chancellor Linda Katehi had advised, or join the walkout.

Professor Pat Turner, vice provost for Undergraduate Studies, toured the campus to see for herself how the day was going. Everywhere she looked, professors were teaching and students were learning — in the big Life Sciences, Giedt and 194 Chem lecture halls, in Chem 2A, Hart, Wellman and Olson.

“Classrooms were packed,” she said. “I saw the reason the state needs to give us more money.”

Whatever students or their professors decided about the walkout, the university took steps to “cover” all of the 1,360 or so classes that were scheduled on Sept. 24.

“Our information is that the majority of classes were covered,” said Turner, meaning that for each the instructor or a colleague was there, or that the instructor had e-mailed the class syllabus and-or assignments to his or her students, or posted the information online.

Deans reported that no student complaints were received.

Department chair fills in

Junior physics major Matt Proveaux went to his 9 a.m. class in 55 Roessler Hall, even though he knew his professor would not be there.

“I’m paying so much for the class, I want to get as much out of it as I can,” Proveaux said. Indeed, what he got during his first day in Physics 105A (Analytical Mechanics) was a minilecture from the department chair, Professor Warren Pickett, on Sir Isaac Newton.

Pickett was filling in for Assistant Professor Manuel Calderon de la Barca Sanchez, who had e-mailed his students to say he supported the walkout and would not hold class on the walkout day.

Calderon’s e-mail said in part: “I believe that if we do nothing, if we don’t make any noise and make the case for a return to a commitment to excellence, it will be all too easy to make the fee increases and the salary cuts permanent, and then we’ll watch many of the best scholars flee for greener pastures in other universities, and watch as students decide that they can get better value for their money elsewhere, starting a vicious cycle that will be very difficult to stop.”

Professors Jonathan Eisen and Winder McConnell, in an opinion column that appeared Sept. 22 in The Sacramento Bee, said: “None of us wants these miserable budget conditions and furloughs.”

But, is cutting class the answer? No, they said.

“Simply put, we see it as a moral, pragmatic and political misstep for faculty to abandon their classrooms and their students,” Eisen and McConnell wrote.

So, from 2 to 4:10 p.m., McConnell stood behind the lectern in 27 Wellman Hall, teaching his Integrated Studies 8 class titled Chivalry. “There were 25 students enrolled and every one of them attended,” said McConnell, whose appointment is in the Department of German.

Eisen, a professor of evolution and ecology, and medical microbiology and immunology, did not have any classes scheduled on the walkout day. He said he spent most of the day preparing for four lectures to be given the next day, Sept. 25.

“I did walk around to check out some of the rallies — and am happy (that) people are expressing their opinions,” he told Dateline by e-mail. “As I have said in my blog and in interviews yesterday, to me the editorial was simply about the principle of teaching class and not having faculty stage a walkout from teaching their classes.

“I am sympathetic to many of the concerns expressed around UC campuses, especially those of students.”

‘Misplaced priorities’

Many protesters said they feared UC was being privatized, with higher fees that will make the university less accessible and less diverse.

And they took aim at UC President Mark G. Yudof when complaining about UC finances.

Physics professor Markus Luty, who addressed the crowd, said the blame lies elsewhere: “Let’s be clear: The current crisis in the UC system is the result of state budget cuts, not the policies of the UC leadership.”

Nevertheless, he said, “the UC system will not rise again unless our university leaders go beyond managing the cuts, to leading the fight to restore public funding for the university.”

Luty said the state has been cutting UC funding disproportionately for many years. In 1980, he said, 17 percent of the state budget went to higher education and 3 percent for prisons. Today, California spends 7 percent for higher education and 10 percent for prisons.

“Believe me, I get that the economy is bad this year,” Luty said. “But the UC percentage of the state budget has been going down for years, in good times and bad. These misplaced priorities need to be changed.”

He urged the crowd to get involved in “addressing the root problem: the funding priorities of our governor and state legislators. We must hold them accountable, and demand that they reverse the long-term decline in UC funding.”

Indeed, the UC Office of the President said the same thing. Lawrence Pitts, interim provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, acknowledged the anger and angst around the system, and expressed hope that this anger “will be directed more precisely at Sacramento, where the heart of the problem lies in shifting political priorities and a dysfunctional system of governance.”

And while most students may have spent the day in class, Cassandra Paul, a graduate student in physics, said she believed the protest rally on the Quad was the best place to be.

“Being here is the best way we can express our commitment to education,” she told the crowd.