Occupy Chico State

On Thursday morning while riding to school, the main entrance was blocked with police tape. Supposedly someone had called in a bomb threat. Later during the day, my office building was evacuated because of some kind of mechanical malfunction. Finally, a fire drill set off alarms and forced us to leave the gym. All that seemed like a series of curious coincidences.

That night I was scheduled to give a talk at the Occupied Chico State teach-in, which was supposed to be followed by a take-over of the administration building. Because of the (phony?) bomb threat, the building was locked down early.

I had intended to discuss a sequence of the Bonus March, the GI Bill, which made higher education more accessible, then Reagan's 1966 institution of tuition for the previously tuition-free university system, culminating in the mess we have today. On Friday, I gave a brief overview of the talk on our local NPR station.

Here is our unedited conversation.

http://www.archive.org/details/OccupyChicoState