Paly alumni witnessed and participated in the recent protests against statewide public school budget cuts on March 4 at public universities throughout California, despite the limited action taken by Palo Alto students.

“I found out about it [the protesting] because my friends in college told me about it,” senior Audrey Chan said. “Otherwise, I would’ve known nothing about it because I haven’t seen anything going on in Palo Alto.”

In public universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, however, both students and professors took an active role in the protests, according to 2009 Paly graduate and current Berkeley freshman Seung-Yeon Choi, who claims that everyone on campus was extremely active in the protests.

“Students, even the ones that didn’t directly participate, seemed to be generally supportive of the protest,” Choi said. “Students made up the biggest part of the protest group. They want to prevent future fee hikes and the privatization of the UC system. Some professors canceled classes so that their students could protest, but even the ones that did not cancel classes seemed generally supportive of the students taking initiative.”

According to Choi, many protesters gathered in front of Sather Gate with their picket signs, chanting “Whose University? Our University!”

“It was pretty amazing to witness,” Choi said. “Around noon, they [the protesters] all marched off to nearby cities like Oakland and San Francisco to march and show their support for public education.”

The protests are happening throughout the state, according to 2009 Paly graduate Amin Ronaghi, who is a current freshman at the University of California, Santa Cruz and attended a picket rally at his school.

“We held peaceful rallies at the entrances, blocking all traffic going in and out campus,” Ronaghi said. “We held a strike where the campus got completely shut down. None of the dining halls or stores were open and there were no classes [that day].”

However, when compared to the protests seen a few months ago regarding the 32 percent tuition increase, Ronaghi seemed to think that this protest was considerably tamer.

“This protest was much, much more organized than the one a couple of months ago,” Ronaghi said. “This protest was completely peaceful and we had no intentions with causing trouble or harm to people or property.”

Although the protests were not as violent as last time, Choi thought the protest on March 4 was more widespread.

“Last semester’s protest was more concentrated on campus, whereas students went to different cities to protest this semester because March 4 was the day many students were gathering in the big cities to fight for public education,” Choi said.

Editor’s Note: Amin Ronaghi and Seung-Yeon Choi were former members of The Paly Voice