Amid loud student protests that roiled the UCLA campus, the UC Board of Regents this afternoon approved a 32% increase in student fees. 
 
 The fee hike of $2,500, or 32%, will come in two steps by next fall. That would bring the basic UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges, for a total that would be about triple the UC cost a decade ago. Room, board and books can add another $16,000. 
 
 Only student regent Jesse Bernal voted against the undergraduate fees. 
 
 The noise of protesters came through the window as the regents voted. It was only lightly discussed, with UC President Mark G. Yudof urging that students explore all the financial-aid possibilities so they don’t get scared away or drop out. 
 
 Groups of UC students from several other campuses arrived in Westwood to join a demonstration against the fee hike, and a group of protesters was occupying a UCLA classroom building. 
 
 UCLA officials declared Campbell Hall, where the sit-in continued, closed for the day. Inside, about 40 to 50 students who had chained the doors shut shortly after midnight were issuing e-mail statements. 
 
 “We choose to fight back, to resist, where we find ourselves, the place where we live and work, our university,” their statement said. Campus police surrounded the classroom building, but no arrests were made. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 As the University of California’s Board of Regents met Thursday at U.C.L.A. and approved a plan to raise undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — 32 percent next fall, hundreds of students from campuses across the state demonstrated outside, beating drums and chanting slogans against the increase. 
 
 Isaac Miller and Irene Van, who traveled to U.C.L.A. late Wednesday night in a bus caravan from Berkeley, said they worried about how higher fees would affect illegal immigrant students, who are not eligible for financial aid, and minority students, already dwindling in number since Proposition 209 prohibited affirmative action. 
 
 “Diversity is central to this,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s at stake here.” 
 
 Mr. Miller and Ms. Van wore shreds of the red armbands adopted at a Sept. 24 walkout, when more than 5,000 students demonstrated outside Sproul Hall at Berkeley. 
 
 After Thursday’s vote, as news trickled out to students rallying outside, the chants grew louder and students linked arms to block regents from leaving the building. The police intervened, and as one regent left, about 100 students clustered around him, yelling “Shame on you!” 
 
 Mark Yudof, the university president, said the state budget cuts had left the university no choice but to raise fees, and noted that the system received only half as much, per student, from the state as it did in 1990. 
 
 “My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.” 
 
 At U.C.L.A. on Wednesday, 14 demonstrators, including 12 students, were arrested for disrupting the Regents meeting. Some demonstrators barricaded themselves inside Campbell Hall, where they spent Wednesday night; others spent the night in tent cities on campus. 
 
 Rodrigo Verdugo, 18, a freshman at Cal State San Marcos and the first in his family to go to college, carried a sign that said “no fee hikes.” He said he worried that if his parents, migrant farm workers from Mexico, could not afford state university fees, his younger siblings “might have to work in the fields, too, if this becomes so expensive.” 
 
 Standing next to him, Maria Isabel Rocha mentioned ways the budget cuts were already being felt. “The library has cut hours, we can’t print, staff have been furloughed and T.A.s have been cut,” she said, referring to teaching assistants. “So there is less instruction and less office hours, but we’re still responsible for the same amount of material.” 
 
 Ms. Rocha, 19, said she already worked two jobs, and higher fees would mean taking on another. “I might have to take a quarter off to make money to afford tuition,” she said.
– Student protesters chanted “Shame on you! Shame on you!” on the UCLA campus today as the University of California board of regents approved a whopping 32% tuition hike. A year at a UC school—not including room and board—will now cost $10,300, three times the price in 1999. The moves comes as the university system struggles with draconian cuts in funding from the state's strapped government. After the demonstrators learned of the decision, many told the LA Times they worried about having to drop out. “I’m on my own,” said one student. “I can’t ask my family. In this economy, no one is stable.” The state cut its funding for the 10-campus system by 20%, or $813 million, this year, notes the New York Times.