CALIFORNIA- A UC Berkeley professor who’s outside California’s State Capitol said there’s a positive energy infusing today’s protests after a week of tumult within the system.

UCB School of Education Professor Ingrid Seyer-Ochi is at the corner of L Street and 11th just outside California’s State Capitol, participating in today’s rally to defend and advocate for public education. She’s surrounded by a crowd she describes as mostly made up of college students, faculty and some families with young children, carrying signs like “Learning is not a Luxury,” “UC Incorporated,” and “Please Fund My School.” The speeches so far have mostly focused on fee increases and access to higher education, Seyer-Ochi says, with less attention to K-12.

Ochi says her ride up to the Capitol—financed by an individual donor who signed on to back 15 buses from Berkeley to Sacramento—had a “high energy feel,” with students and faculty mingling freely, not always knowing which was which. Faculty members were asked to wear nametags so they’re easily identifiable once they join the crowd, and many are wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the California Faculty Association and California Teachers Association alongside slogans of their own.

It’s been a difficult week at the UCs, between the unrest on Berkeley’s campus and the intensifying race tensions at UCSD. So Seyer-Ochi says today is about being positive. “There was a feeling this week…tons of students emailing, ‘I’m exhausted, I’m really angry, how do I move through this?’” Seyer-Ochi says, “We don’t know what the fees next year will be.” Today in Sacramento, Seyer-Ochi says, “There’s some calling out the Governor with ‘Shame, Shame!’ but it's very positive. We just want to support education.”

Seyer-Ochi has seen the impact of the budget crisis and the recession on her students in a big way. She teaches a large undergraduate class with 150 students. In the past, she says the university would pay a team of graduate students 10 hours per week to lead 1-hour sections of 25 undergrads enrolled in the course. Now, she says, each graduate student is responsible for two sections, totaling 50 undergrads. That’s forced Seyer-Ochi to change her pedagogy and the critical thinking support she can provide.