MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL NEGOTIATION COMMITTEE (CNN) OF

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO STUDENTS TO THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

June 1, 2010

(What follows is an English translation of the message broadcasted by the UPR

National Student Negotiating Committee to the people of Puerto Rico on
Tuesday, June 1 at 5:00 p.m. via www.upresunpais.com. The message was
issued in response to the intensive and expensive media campaign against the
student strike launched by the UPR administration in the past week.)

Fellow students, we’ve shared a common path beneath sun and rain for more
than 30 days, guided in this intense journey by a just, simple and reasonable
cause: the defense of our public university education.

We speak too to you, mothers and fathers, workers and citizens, to all of Puerto
Rico. We announce to you that this has been a long, intense and difficult process
because the President of the University of Puerto Rico Jose Ramón De la Torre
and the President of the Board of Regents, Ygrí Rivera, have done everything in
their power to avoid open dialogue, to retard the process of negotiation and to
deny our demands. The intransigence and bad faith have been such that they
have recurred to lies, defamation and violence.

Despite all of this and thanks to the support of the student community, we have
remained firm in our task to defend the delegations of every one of our
assemblies: democratic assemblies that represent the majority opinion of our
community. Demands so categorical that they have been ratified time and again.
If these demands are not addressed, the UPR will not be the university it has
been.

For these reasons we have insisted on sitting down at the negotiating table: and
we want to continue negotiating. Our demands have remained consistent since
the first day.

The first demand has been the repeal of Certification 98 – a document which, if
implemented as it was, would have denied the benefit of tuition waivers for
students who represent an incalculable value for our university. We can inform
you today that we have rescued this right of the students and the contribution
they make to the University, such that the Board of Regents has committed itself
to guarantee our accords. The essential part remains to be assured: that the
Board certifies the accord and follows through on its word.

Our second demand is that the politics of privatization not be continued in the
UPR system. Specifically, we demand a guarantee that none of the campuses be
privatized either by expropriation or by Public-Private Alliances. As a result of our
negotiations the Board of Regents committed itself to not use the Law of Public-
Private Alliances of 2009, thus protecting the university’s patrimony. But the
Board has yet to guarantee this with a certification, thus following through on
their word.

The third demand is one of the most worrying and has become the real threat of
this entire process: this is the increase in the cost of study, whether by a direct
increase in tuition or by a new fee for all students – not in the distant future, but
beginning in August, 2010. Each meeting of the CNN with the President of the
University and the Board of Regents has confirmed that the university
administration has the intention to put the burden of this crisis on the shoulders
of the students and their families.

This would represent a burden additional to the 33% increase in 2005, the 12%
increase in 2007 and the 4% annual increase beginning in 2007, which all entering
freshmen would pay until 2016.

It is important that you know, as part of this scaled increase, that the
administration committed itself to you the students, that they would not increase
tuition during the years in which you are completing your studies. The Board of
Regents guaranteed this in Certification 60. The administration guaranteed this in
a letter they sent to you, the students, on June 28, 2007. And the President of the
Board of Regents, Ygrí Rivera, guaranteed this in a letter from April, 2009,
addressed to the Coordinator of ARRA Funds, in which she says “to raise tuition is
not a viable option” and that it “would not resolve the situation.”

But more worrying still is that the ARRA funds were supposed to be used to avoid
the imposition of any measure that would affect your ability to continue studying.

As of today the administration has refused to guarantee this commitment at the

negotiating table. Instead, they speak of an increase, cloaked as a “special fee,”
which could amount to $1,300. For these reasons we demand of the Board of
Regents a guarantee that there will not be another increase.

These three demands flow from the enormous budgetary problem that the
University is experiencing. The administrators themselves have recognized their
inability to collect debts of 300 million dollars that are owed to the UPR and that
together with the Public Law #7 are the basis of the deficit. We must thus ask
ourselves: who should pay for the irresponsibility of the administration? We the
students, with a tuition increase to pay loans and debts? To pay for it with loss of
our universities?

Our last demand is that no sanctions be applied to any student. Defending public
higher education is not a crime, and to penalize the thousands of students who
have been doing this in the course of this long process would be an injust act.
Why injust? Because you know that this strike has been characterized by a
creative, distinct and non-violent space: we have painted sidewalks and murals,
we’ve planted gardens and created radio shows, we’ve created street theater
and, confronted with the persistent threats of expulsion and the billy club, we’ve
responded with songs and flowers.

How can one sanction the planting of trees, the cleaning of green spaces, music
and art? But above all, how can one sanction the defense of public education for
all of you, for all of Puerto Rico?

One cannot.

With these demands in the process of negotiation and with your solidarity, we are
pushing forward what we have demanded since the beginning: a University in
which excellence and accessibility for our education is assured. We the students
are the essence of the University, which is yours, which is your family’s, which is
Puerto Rico’s.

The Board of Regents must assume its historic responsibility and complete what
they have begun: negotiation.

Negotiation in which we are representing 64,511 students

Negotiation to certify the accords with respect to tuition waivers.
Negotiation to certify the prohibition of the privatization of the campuses.
Negotiation to guarantee that the cost of study will not be increased.
Negotiation to guarantee that no student will be penalized for defending a public
university education, for which all of us pay and which belongs to us.

When we have achieved this, no one will have lost, and all will have won, and the
University will keep being ours, the university for all of Puerto Rico.

Eleven campuses, One University of Puerto Rico!

Translated by:
Christopher Powers