Cal State University students are demanding that police apologize for locking them out of a public meeting.
About 20 CSU students were temporarily barred from re-entering last Tuesday’s CSU Board of Trustees meeting, when tuition was increased by 15 percent. CSU Fullerton’s Chirag Bhakta and Bryan Norton said this happened until five or 10 minutes before the meeting ended.
“While still outside, one of the guards started locking the doors of the entrance into the building,” history major Bhakta said. “I then went to go open the other doors, at which the guard rushed to and aggressively told us that we could not come back into the building.”
Norton, a philosophy major, was present at the meeting with Bhakta. He has since created a blog titled “Make CSU Apologize.” In it, he accuses the university of violating the Brown Act, a state law that gives the public the right to attend meetings of local legislative bodies.
“We are demanding a public apology in response to these events, both from the board of trustees and the CSU Police for their disgracefully undemocratic and illegal acts,” Norton said in his blog. “The students are prepared to sue the CSU, whose police officers and trustees deprived them of the right to be present during most of the meeting, if a simple public apology is not given.”
According to Erik Fallis, CSU media relations specialist, the students gained access immediately after they agreed to give up their signs and sticks.
Fallis said that while the students did not agree to put their signs away “immediately,” they gained access to the meeting after doing so. The signs and sticks were the “only issue,” he added.
Fallis said that CSU Police and Chief Nate Johnson acted in a “matter of safety and practice.”
This isn’t the first time protestors were barred from entering a CSU meeting.
In September 2009, many protestors were barred from entering a CSU Board of Trustees meeting. At the time, a CSU spokesperson told Beach News that people were allowed into the building, but in small groups.
“What the authorities want is to manage the number of people that are at the meeting. So they will be allowed to come in small groups, five or six, and then when they leave another group will come in” said Clara Potes-Fellow, a then-CSU spokesperson.
Norton said he sent a letter to the CSU appealing for a formal apology, but has not yet received a response.
He said, “[They have] not responded at all to numerous student please for [an apology] statement.”
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