At around 6:30pm, after voting nearly lock-step 15-to-1 in favor of a 33% across the board tuition hike per student (instituted gradually bringing it up to $6,300 per semester by 2015), CUNY’s Board of Trustees began individually filing out through back door of Baruch College into waiting town cars and at least one security truck.

Safely ensconced in a bubble of law enforcement, they had managed to shake all but one of the several hundreds of protesters who had massed angrily at the school; A solitary figure in a pink t-shirt holding a small stack of the Occupy Wall Street Journal in one hand and a middle finger in the other repeatedly shouting in a deep baritone, “Fuck the board of trustees!”

It was David Suker, United Federation of Teachers member and OWS stalwart who describes himself as being “on a mission” to set things right at CUNY since being expelled from City College in the “mid 90s” for protesting the system’s increases–when free CUNY education was demolished in earnest. Reminded that CUNY’s motto is “An Exceptional Affordable Education,” Suker just laughed and went back to heckling the board.

“Fuck the board of trustees,” he said again. “Take your fucking limo home you fucking idiots.”

Especially rankling to protesters is that $15 million of the budget increase is slated for private security. “That’s nothing new, they put more money in for security whenever there’s student unrest,” Suker says, referring especially to another tuition hike several years ago, which was met with widespread anger.

At the 25th Street side of the building, nineteen year-old native Jess Schiff was one of hundreds of protesters chanting down the new increase. “Its supposed to be a free system,” Schiff said. A lower middle-class Manhattan native, Schiff would theoretically be just the type of person CUNY’s original mandate of free higher education–the gradually abolished so-called “open admissions policy”–would serve.

Schiff, who does not live with her parents, says she is just one of many in her circle of friends who cannot manage city tuition and earning a living at the same time. So for now she “waits tables,” hoping to save enough to go back to school. Asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Schiff, replies almost inaudibly, “a musician.” Then she adds, “but in this economy that’s impossible. I’ll probably study English.” (Photos: ANIMALNewYork)

Fifteen people were arrested during a protest against tuition hikes that spilled into the lobby of a Baruch College building where CUNY trustees were meeting to discuss the increase. Students were warned to leave the area and many of them sat down instead.

At around 5:45PM, CUNY Public Safety officers began making arrests. Witnesses say several of them used their batons. According to a spokesman for Baruch, most of the students were taken into custody and issued summonses, although some were handed over to the NYPD.

CUNY released the following statement which consistently refers to students as “protesters.”

While a public hearing was being conducted by the CUNY Board of Trustees at Baruch College, at which more than 95 speakers had signed up to present their views, a group of protesters entered the first-floor lobby. Because the hearing room was filled to capacity, some of the protesters were directed to an overflow room equipped with the live video of the ongoing hearing. Some of the protesters refused to proceed to the overflow room and instead surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials. The protesters were asked twice to exit the lobby or return to the overflow room. They refused, creating a public safety hazard. In order to ensure that public safety and access to the building was maintained for students who were attending classes this evening, the CUNY Public Safety officers secured the space and removed the protesters. One Public Safety officer was transported to a hospital for chest pains and two others received minor injuries. Fifteen protesters were arrested and processed by CUNY Public Safety officers. Throughout this time, the public hearing as well as the college’s classes and other business functions continued.

Basically all the groups are pissed off at Governor Paterson—who faces lower approval ratings than Spitzer did after the hooker news broke—with his plan to slash and burn CUNY budgets to balance the budget. Unlike their fancy, better funded counterparts at NYU and the New School, CUNY students aren’t planning on occupying or storming any food courts—everyone knows the food sucks at the city’s colleges.

“NYU will continue to dream. When students come to us having problems staying here, we’ll have to encourage them to take time off, or attend a public university, and have those credits transfer.”