Page One

Hundreds of nurses overwhelmed a student protest of tuition and debt at the University of California's Berkeley campus this afternoon. 

The protest, one of more than a hundred organized nationwide as part of the "Million Student March," called for tuition-free public universities, the cancellation of all student debt and a $15 minimum wage for all college employees. 

The roughly 200 students gathered in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza were badly outnumbered when a solidarity march from National Nurses United arrived. While student organizers did not endorse any political candidates or parties in calling for the march, the arriving nurses strongly advocated for supporting Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

"We've got a solution to the problem in a candidate," National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro said. The nurses came with large signs adorned with Sanders' face topped with a Robin Hood-style hat to advocate a "Robin Hood" tax on Wall Street trading that they say could be used to eliminate college tuition at public universities. 

Graduating students "literally have shackles around their neck," DeMoro said. "It's disgraceful." 

Some students already gathered outside of the college's admissions building advocated for Sanders, but others sold socialist newspapers or came out in a show of support for University of Missouri students who ousted their president for a slow response to a series of racist incidents. 

One organizer wearing a "Black Lives Matter" T-shirt said of Sanders, "He's still going to have to work for my vote." 

But the students largely embraced the show of solidarity by the nurses' union. Another student who had just led the crowd in a chant of "black lives matter," went on to say, "Shout out to all the nurses for coming out strong." 

"This is what they are afraid of: coalition building," she said. "They don't want us all out here fighting for one thing, they want to divide and conquer." 

That one thing the crowd clearly agreed on was free tuition for all students at public universities. The average college graduate this year will have over $35,000 in debt and join the 40 million Americans now sharing $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. Tuition at California's public universities has risen sharply in recent years, leading to widespread protests at Berkeley and elsewhere. 

But the idea of having free public higher education, prevalent in much of the world, has gained little traction in mainstream American politics, something everyone at the rally is seeking to change. 

"We have to resist the idea that abolishing tuition is radical," one student organizer said. 

After about an hour of speeches, the protesters marched to the campus administration building where they plastered the front door with demands for debt relief.