Portland State University students and supporters shut down the school's governing board meeting Thursday before trustees could vote on a 4 percent tuition increase for in-state undergraduates.

After the disruption, the trustees moved to a basement conference room across campus and ultimately approved the tuition increase, anyway. The new location, an emergency communications conference room, was in an unmarked room in the basement of the school's engineering building.

The tuition increase amounts to roughly $303 more per year for Oregon residents. For non-Oregonians attending PSU, the 3.5 percent increase represents an $843 yearly increase.

"This is, frankly, pushing it beyond where I'm comfortable with," President Wim Wiewel said when explaining the tuition increase to the trustees before the vote.

But as with other Oregon universities, the PSU board faces looming pension-fund obligations that will hit its balance sheet next year. While PSU and other schools received more state funding in the 2015-17 biennium, "our costs are likely to increase by $15 million" next year, leaving a $5.6 million shortfall.

The meeting marked the third consecutive disruption for the volunteer governing board.

Peter Nickerson, the board chair, said the trustees discussed a "contingency plan" on Wednesday.

"It was decided by the organizers of the meeting that we would come here," he said of the basement meeting room.

In contrast to a December trustees meeting, where students shut down the proceedings, Thursday's protest was led by non-Portland State students, including local leaders of the $15 Now and Black Lives Matter movements.

The standing room only crowd arrived at 1 p.m., with many of the more than 100 students and supporters wearing black tape over their mouths. The tape, student activist Olivia Pace told the trustees, symbolized "the way we've been silenced."



Armed security guards on campus, which the trustees approved last June following several years of study and debate, were a principal point of contention for the activists.



Before the first meeting was abruptly shut down, a handful of students testified about their economic and everyday struggles.



Kayla Gmyr, a freshman from New Mexico, said she'd spent years saving to go to college. PSU was her dream school -- affordable, urban, diverse. But now, she said, she no longer believes that.



"I can no longer afford this school," she told trustees.



Bakari Hill, another PSU student, testified about the fear students of color feel on campus. Hill presented a bouquet of flowers to trustees. "If and when I become another statistic," he said of police shootings,"...put flowers on my grave."

Just after 1:51 p.m., trustees walked out after the community activists spoke up and began walking single file toward the trustees table.

Nickerson asked trustees to take a 10-minute break.

After the trustees left, activists said they demanded the university increase the minimum wage for all workers to $15 an hour immediately, disarm the school's on-campus security crew, stop doing business with food contractor Aramark and cut administrators' pay to put an end to tuition hikes.

At 2:25 p.m., a university official alerted the protesters that the trustees would not come back.

In the meantime, the trustees were escorted across campus to the backup meeting room space. A campus security employee greeted this reporter and a university spokesman before leading them into the meeting.

At the end of the more than four hour meeting, Wiewel and the trustees discussed the protest and disruption from hours earlier.

Wiewel said the incident was "unfortunate" and not representative of the sentiment on campus.

"It's really galling to hear the accusations that, 'you're not wiling to listen to us,' when in fact all invitations to sit with us have been turned down," Wiewel said of the activists.

Some trustees echoed those sentiments. Margaret Kirkpatrtick said she'd had drinks, lunch and coffee with several activists to hear their concerns, but she felt that didn't matter once the meetings started.

Trustee Rick Miller floated the option of holding a special meeting to more formally air the students' concern. "I'd like to have a two-way dialogue," he said.

Jack Orchard, a Portland attorney with expertise in the state's open meetings law, said he had "no idea" how the trustees' decision to secretly relocate the meeting could be considered legal.



"They can suspend the meeting because of disruption, but they can't hold a public meeting in private," he said.

School officials said the meeting complied with the state's public meeting laws because the live audio stream of the meeting was still available to students in the same room where the 1 p.m. meeting first began.

School officials streamed the meeting online for the first time Thursday.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

Rob Davis contributed to this report