It's not just Elsevier but also other publishers. They are doing everybody a favor here by forcing the issue. They could just chicken out and make UC pay for open access at a bit lower rate and we'd not be having this debate. But instead they are acting in a rather tone deaf way and are probably accelerating the demise of their business. I actually published a few things with them when I did my Ph. D. back in the day. Given the current debate, I'd probably avoid them and favor other channels these days. Researchers being aware of this is not going to help their marketing.

IMHO all public research funding should be conditional on full open access. If you use public funding, the research results need to be open access for anyone. I'm pretty sure that is becoming standard practice already but in so far it isn't, that should pretty much be non negotiable when getting funding or for any tax money earmarked for research.