35 Protesters Stage Sit-In at UCI Office : Rally: Group issues demands in support of affirmative action and arrested hunger strikers.

IRVINE —  About 35 UC Irvine and UC Berkeley students marched through the UCI administration building Monday and briefly occupied the school’s admissions office, leaving after a university official accepted a list of the protesters’ demands about affirmative action and a group of hunger strikers arrested Sunday.

The peaceful rally, which was led by the nine Berkeley students, began at noon and ended a little more than an hour later, when UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel N. Gomez met with the students in the admissions office and accepted a flyer announcing the students’ intention to “build a mass movement to defend affirmative action.” Another 100 UCI students gathered outside to show their support during the demonstration.

The protesters said they were supporting five hunger strikers who were arrested by campus police Sunday for disobeying an order to dismantle a tent encampment in front of the UCI administration building. The hunger strikers--four UCI students and one from Claremont Colleges--were cited Sunday on misdemeanor charges of failing to obey a police order and released from Orange County Jail.

On Monday, State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) urged UC President Richard Atkinson to begin immediate negotiations on affirmative action with the five hunger strikers “out of respect for their conviction and compassion for their condition.” Hayden also criticized UCI officials for making the “medical and moral mistake” of arresting the protesters over the weekend.

The hunger strikers said they are continuing their fast--which marked its 14th day Monday--to protest the UC Board of Regents’ July decision to abolish affirmative action policies for the 162,000-student university system. The strikers are heading to Sacramento today in an attempt to meet with Gov. Pete Wilson and members of the Board of Regents.

They plan to stay there for two days, said Cesar Cruz, 21, one of the hunger strikers. Depending on their physical condition, the strikers may move their protest to Los Angeles “to give the movement a statewide focus,” Cruz said.

Illiana Soto, a UCI senior who participated in Monday’s rally and sit-in, said the demonstrators want to send a message to university officials, whom she believes have not been “helping the students who want to keep affirmative action.

“We want to tell the administrators, to tell everyone, that we’re not going to stand and wait for this policy to be implemented,” she said. “We’re not going to wait. We’re not going to sit still. We’re going to continue to do something about it.”

Lee Felarca, 24, who came down from Berkeley with eight other students to help organize Monday’s rally, said, “A hunger strike of five people on its own is insufficient to force these bureaucrats into doing anything. A lot is required to get more people involved, and today’s protest is just the first step to show the [hunger] strikers that they are not alone.”

Gomez said later the “outside activists . . . disrupted the services of the university.”

“Their action reflected the confusion of outsiders,” Gomez added, “who are lacking in correct information because those policies they want to change are Regents-made and cannot be changed at UC Irvine.”

Times staff writer Martin Miller contributed to this story.