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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― University of California campus police on Wednesday handcuffed and removed 14 demonstrators who interrupted and refused to leave a UC Board of Regents meeting where officials pushed a plan for steep tuition increases.

The demonstrators, who were mostly UC union employees, were protesting layoffs, furloughs, fee hikes and other actions taken by university officials to address the 10-campus system's budget crisis.

The regents left the meeting room at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus when more than 100 protesters stood up and chanted "Who's university? Our university!" The board members returned after campus police arrested the demonstrators.

The 14 people were cited for trespassing and unlawful assembly, and were released once they were outside the building.

At the meeting, UC officials presented their plan to raise student fees by more than 30 percent next year to help close a massive budget shortfall caused by rising costs and deep cuts in state funding.

UC President Mark Yudof said the fee increases were needed to maintain the school's place among the nation's top research institutions.

"What we cannot do is surrender to the greatest enemy of the University of California, which is mediocrity," Yudof said. "The state has stopped building freeways to higher education, and they have started building toll roads."

Yudof said he also sympathized with the protestors who interrupted the meeting.

"The students ought to be angry," he said. "I'm angry about it too."

"It is a dysfunctional state government," Yudof continued, "and that is piling on top of the dire economic circumstances."

The budget plan calls for a midyear fee increase of 15 percent, followed by another 15 percent hike next fall. Undergraduate fees for California residents would rise to $10,302, which doesn't include room, board or campus fees that average $930.

Under the proposal, fees for graduate students and out-of-state residents would rise by similar amounts, and the university would charge additional fees for undergraduates in professional programs such as engineering and business.

The proposed fee hikes, which follow a 9.3 percent increase approved in May, would generate an additional $378 million in revenue, of which one third would be set aside for financial aid.

San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos was among the public speakers at the regents meeting, and denounced the board's plan, which he said would be "chopping from the bottom" of the UC system.

The Board of Regents was expected to vote on the plan in November, but it is already facing opposition from one of its members, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi.

"This jaw-dropping proposal...will single-handedly take a University of California education off the table for thousands of hardworking students," Garamendi said.

"I plead with every UC Regent and all those in the UC and CSU leadership to seek alternative funding solutions and do something positive rather than further endangering the state's future prosperity," he said. 

Students agreed, saying the fee increases would create financial hardship for them and their families.

"Student fees are detrimental to access, affordability and diversity in our system," said Victor Sanchez, president of the University of California Students Association. "We have reached a point to which the University of California can no longer call itself affordable."

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