IRVINE – In simultaneous protests, UC Irvine students demonstrated for free tuition and in solidarity with anti-racism protestors at the University of Missouri – joining hundreds of thousands of students nationwide doing the same thing Thursday.

Meanwhile, UCI is getting ready to finalize details on some demands made last January by the Black Student Union, including the creation of a separate dorm section for incoming black students.

On Thursday, about 150 UCI students joined in the Million Student March, a protest at more than 100 campuses to demand tuition-free public college, the erasure of all current student debt and $15 minimum wage for all campus workers.

“We demand free higher education,” said organizer Taylor Chanes, a UCI junior studying political science who said she is putting herself through school and has accumulated $20,000 in debt so far.

“I took all the AP classes in high school and worked hard just to get into this university,” said Chanes, who earns $9 an hour working part-time at a Starbucks and said she worries about paying her debt when she graduates.

Undergraduate tuition in the University of California system for California residents is $12,240 but once housing, books and other expenses are calculated, a year at a UC school averages between $29,500 and $33,600. Students from families that make less than $80,000 annually are awarded free tuition, said UCI spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon.

Over the next two years, all UC employees who work more than 20 hours a week will earn $15 an hour, university leaders announced last summer.

Students speaking near the university’s administration building talked about hardships, inequality and government subsidies they want to see channeled to education. Several touted Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders’ call for college education to be tuition-free and debt-free.

One student cast a dissenting voice, drawing boos.

“Socialism in this country is not possible,” Anton Castaneda told the crowd. “This country is not built on free stuff. This country is built on equal opportunity.”

While one group of UCI students spoke out about tuition issues and later marched near the school’s administration building, standing quietly and blocking most of the Ring Mall walkway at Anteater Plaza was another group of students led by UCI’s Black Student Union. They stood in solidarity with students at the University of Missouri, where the state system president and the university chancellor resigned this week amid complaints of racial insensitivity there.

Campuses across the nation saw walkouts and rallies Thursday in support of the Missouri students and to highlight problems at their own campuses, according to media reports.

At UCI, the Black Student Union filed a letter with a number of demands earlier this year.

Saying there’s “a climate of anti-blackness at UCI,” the students’ demands include the creation and funding of a student resource, outreach and retention center, similar to those on other UC campuses, with the hiring of two black program coordinators from the previous graduating class, as well as black psychologists, peer counselors and academic counselors. They also want administrators to promote UCI’s African American Studies program to full departmental status and create a zero-tolerance policy for racism.

In response, Chancellor Howard Gillman assembled a task force. So far, Lawhon said, administrators have agreed to at least three of the group’s demands: the creation of a permanent task force for outreach efforts, restoring a resident adviser to the Ele Si Rosa Parks Theme House, (a residence house for students interested in African American studies,) and creating a Black Scholars Excellence Hall, where dorms will be set aside for black students in the Mesa Court residence hall expansion.

The Black Student Union pointed to several incidents in recent years as evidence of “institutional and pervasive racism.” They include a UCI fraternity performing in “blackface” in 2013, another fraternity giving out a “once you go black, you never go back” award in 2012, and the university’s dining service offering fried chicken and waffles in honor of a Martin Luther King Jr. symposium in 2011.

Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com