Arguing that staff members are as important to students as teachers, a group of De Anza College students established a ``tent city'' in the middle of the Cupertino campus Monday to protest layoff notices sent to 30 college employees.

By late Monday afternoon, the students had put up five tents but were expecting that more would be added throughout the week. So far, 10 to 15 plan to sleep there at night and pass out fliers during the day to draw attention to cuts they say are unfair. They said some staff and faculty members planned to join them.

The students have expressed their views at community college board of trustee meetings and planned to do so again Monday night. About 1,000 have signed petitions.

``That's going to hurt our education,'' said protest leader Adam Welch of the layoffs of classified employees.

Among the workers targeted for layoffs, Welch said, is an employee who helps students transfer to universities and another who runs the student information desk.

Using a slogan, ``cut fat, not muscle,'' the students also complain that classified employees are taking bigger hits than managers.

``It's a tough situation for everyone,'' said De Anza College President Martha Kanter, who will become the district's chancellor July 1.

She said it was unclear at this point how many people would end up losing their jobs. The state budget has yet to be approved, and some of the losses are tied to retirements and resignations. She said the percentage of management and classified employee layoffs were 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Welch and other students said they didn't know how long they would live at the tent city but that they would keep attending classes and make sure there was ``study time'' at the encampment. On Wednesday, they plan a 12:30 p.m. rally in the main campus quad.

The protest was not organized by the Service Employees International Union Local 715, Welch said, but the union that represents the classified staff supported the students.

While students camp out at De Anza, a group of students at Stanford University entered their sixth day of a hunger strike to protest what they consider unfair work conditions for lower-paid campus workers.

The students are part of a campus labor movement trying to pressure Stanford to create a university-wide policy that would address subcontracting, ``living'' wages and educational opportunities for workers. Most important to the activists is that students and labor have a key role in developing that policy.