A highway was shutdown at Santa Cruz known as a picturesque beach town next to the Pacific Ocean. The reason? A protest by UC Santa Cruz students.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports.

UC Santa Cruz students shut down Highway 1 in protest over tuition

SANTA CRUZ >> Six UC Santa Cruz students brought traffic on Highways 1 and 17 to a standstill for hours after they chained themselves to bins filled with concrete and blocked three lanes of traffic for the better part of Tuesday.

“The disruption was pretty massive,” California Highway Patrol officer Brad Sadek said, adding that the delay affected countless commuters. “So all those people are running late for work or school or any number of things.”

The actions were aimed to protest UC tuition hikes, police brutality and racism, according to student organizers.

About 9:25 a.m., witnesses said a group pulled up in a U-Haul truck, stopped southbound Highway 1 traffic at the Fishhook, and unloaded garbage cans and steel pipes before the six formed a single line across the road. Students linked arms using chains wrapped around their wrists, attached to metal rods inside the steel pipes, with some pipes embedded into the concrete inside the garbage cans.

For a time, traffic moved slowly past the protesters using the shoulder of the road, but for hours traffic was stopped completely to detour around the site.

“Authorities only pay attention to us when we disrupt business as usual. We are making our presence felt because the issues of tuition and violent policing are too important to ignore,” said Ben Mabie, a UCSC undergraduate.