LONG BEACH – California State University trustees approved a 9 percent increase in tuition Wednesday during a raucous meeting that turned violent when demonstrators battled with police, shattering a glass door and sending an officer to the hospital with cuts.

Four people were arrested, but it was unclear if they were students or part of a group of some 70 union workers and activists who arrived by bus to protest the tuition hike, said CSU spokeswoman Claudia Keith.

Two CSU police officers suffered minor injuries.

The chaos caused the meeting to be recessed and reconvened later in a smaller conference room, where the 9-6 vote was taken on the tuition increase as police and protesters tussled outside.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sits on the board and spoke adamantly against the tuition hike, later called the action alarming because the vote was taken out of public view. He called on the board to take another vote in the open at its December meeting.

Keith said the vote was proper. Under state law, when public meetings are disrupted to the point where they cannot continue, they can be reconvened without public notice, she said.

“The security situation got out of hand,” said Assistant Chancellor Robert Turnage. “There was a legitimate concern about security for many people.”

The hike will raise tuition at the 23-campus system by $498, bringing the annual bill to $5,970. CSU’s funding has been slashed by $650 million over the past two years, causing tuition to rise by 23 percent and enrollment to be slashed by 10,000 students.

The University of California system is in similar financial straits. On Wednesday, a group of about 75 student leaders and a few administrators from the University of California Berkeley and Davis visited Sacramento to lobby lawmakers to restore funding for higher education.

The CSU chaos broke out when some two dozen protesters refused to stop speaking at the end of the public comment session. The group chanted “we are the 99 percent” and held up posters reading “make banks pay.”

During the meeting, they had heckled trustees who voiced support for the tuition hike and loudly cheered those who said they did not back it.

CSU officers herded the unruly group out of the building, where they joined another group of protesters who were beating drums and chanting.

Officers tried to close the glass doors to prevent protesters from entering, which caused demonstrators to hang on to the handles to keep them open.

A shoving scuffle erupted, and officers used pepper spray, according to witnesses. Several people tumbled through the doors, where they were quickly handcuffed with plastic ties and taken into custody.

When officers again tried to close the glass doors, the struggle resumed, causing the glass to buckle and shatter.

Long Beach police arrived in riot gear and formed a phalanx in front of the building as protesters dispersed and the situation quieted.

The demonstration was largely driven by members of ReFund California, a coalition of activist and student groups and labor unions seeking to make big banks and wealthy individuals pay higher taxes to help fund public education.

“I think that it keeps going up and up and up, and nobody is doing anything to stop it,” said Kristina Hohman, 22, of Mission Viejo, a senior child development major at Cal State Fullerton.

“Public education is really becoming private education,” Hohman said.

David Inga, 22, a CSUF graduate student, said the tuition increase is disappointing but expected.

“We saw it coming,” said Inga, a history major. “We’ve seen fee increases perpetuated by this chancellor for the past 13 years.”

About 30 CSUF students spent Tuesday night in tents, an action designed to “raise awareness and political consciousness,” said Inga, who helped organize the encampment.

The encampment’s organizers have not set a time limit on how long they will stay but say campus police have been cooperative.

Turnage said he understood protesters’ concerns.

“I understand why people are frustrated, but a lot of this energy is misplaced,” Turnage said. “It needs to be directed at people who have decision-making power over taxes.”

Several trustees said increasing tuition was letting the state Legislature off the hook of funding the 412,000-student system. “We should not be complicit in offering them a way out,” said trustee Bernadette Cheyne.

But others noted that although they did not want to raise tuition, the system had to remain fiscally solvent. “It’s predictable the Legislature won’t fund us,” said trustee Roberta Achtenberg. “We have an institution to run.”

It is the system’s ninth tuition increase in nine years. With campus fees added in, the total cost for undergraduates will be more than $7,000 for the full year.

Elaine Nadalin, a sociology student at CSU Long Beach, was among students opposing the hike.

“Students are the least able to subsidize these increases. Some of us will be barred from accessing higher education,” said Nadalin, a member of the group Students for a Quality Education.

International studies student Michelle Woody said the quality of CSU education was at stake. “It’s an attack on our institution,” she said. “What will our degrees be worth in a couple years? Our pieces of paper will be just that.”

Cal State officials said the availability of financial aid means about 45 percent of the university system’s 412,000 students won’t be affected by the tuition hike.

The tuition hike comes as faculty from two campuses made plans to walk off the job Thursday to protest Cal State’s withholding of contractual pay raises for faculty members.

“The one thing about the Cal State system is that it was inexpensive … now that is changing,” said CSUF graduate student Judith Levy, 22 of Fullerton.

Levy said her tuition has almost tripled since she started at the university five years ago.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.