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Regents address Northeast Quadrant, nonresident tuition

By Judy Lin-Eftekhar, UCLA Today

23 January 2002 | Meeting in Los Angeles last week, the UC Board of Regents voted to move forward on several important capital projects on the Berkeley campus and to make a UC education more affordable to many nonresident students.

The regents certified the environmental impact report on the Northeast Quadrant Science and Safety projects, including replacement buildings for Old Davis Hall and seismically “poor” Stanley Hall. The board also approved an amendment to the campus long-range development plan, giving the campus the ability to increase the square-footage of developed space on the central campus, as described in plans for the northeast quadrant of the campus.

The Stanley Hall Replacement Building will be home to the new Department of Bioengineering and a cornerstone of the campus Health Sciences Initiative. A new building replacing the old portion of Davis Hall will be key to the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, CITRIS.

Northeast quadrant projects include upgrades to the Lower Hearst Parking Structure, Cory Hall, the Naval Architecture Building, and a addition adjacent to Soda Hall. Individual project approvals for Stanley and Davis will be on the regents’ agenda later this year.

The board also okayed design plans for the Hargrove Music Library Expansion building. The campus hopes to begin construction on the three-story building this spring.

Nonresident student tuition
Voting 17 to 5, the regents conditionally approved a new tuition exemption program that will allow nonresident students to pay in-state fees if they have attended at least three years at and graduated from a California high school and if they certify that they are taking steps to legalize their immigration status.

An estimated 200 to 400 nonresident students who are paying $14,933 in fees would be eligible under thenew policy to pay annual resident fees, currently set at $3,859.

Some of these eligible students are undocumented residents, regents clarified, but many are domestic students who, for various reasons, are currently classified as nonresidents. For example, they may have attended high school in California, but their parents did not live here or moved away before they enrolled at UC.

The vote brings UC in line with AB 540, a bill signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis last October. That measure, which took effect Jan. 2, provided tuition exemption for these students in the California State University and the California Community College systems.

“The exemption will make it easier for hard-working, talented students to attend the University of California,” said UC President Richard Atkinson. “The regents’ action today will also keep UC tuition criteria consistent with the state’s policies for the California State University and California Community College campuses, which will help reduce confusion for students and parents as they consider higher education opportunities.”

The majority of the board expressed support for the action. Regent Odessa Johnson described a recent visit to agricultural areas in the state. “Some of the brightest and most promising students are from the Central Valley,” Johnson said. “We hold out the UC as their beacon, but they cannot attend because they are undocumented.”

Outside the meeting, some 250 to 300 students demonstrated their support for the policy. Said student Miguel Cruz: “I came to this country from Mexico when I was 6 years old, and I’ve been waiting for my papers for a very long time,” he said. “I’m currently attending Santa Monica Community College. Without the implementation of AB 540, my education will stop right there.”

In the coming weeks, the university will notify students who are currently paying nonresident tuition about exemption criteria and the application process.

 


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