Campus Rally

To the students that were at the rally on campus Wednesday supporting the fight against budget cuts and fee increases good for you. Unfortunately I am only talking to about 100 students. To the rest of the students that go to Sac State, maybe you don’t care about this issue. Maybe your parents pay your tuition so the fees don’t affect you and furlough days, all that means is less class, but my guess is that many of you do care, and still just didn’t go. Even though the student turnout was pretty low many staff members and professors were there. In fact there were more staff members holding signs saying, “Save our education” than students. Maybe if it was students salaries and jobs being cut versus just classes and budget the resistance would have been stronger.

Other than the low turnout the rally was very motivating. Chants of, “They say cut back, we say fight back” could be heard around campus. The message was definitely received by everyone in attendance. We as students are paying 32 percent more and the teachers are getting 10 percent less. This means the amount of work being put into our education is lessening. It is ridiculous how much tuition has gone up over the years. In 7 years it has gone up over 182% and 250 teachers and staff members have been cut. One of the worst things that have happened this year because of the huge cutbacks is that some people at orientation could not get any of their classes. So some students have to pay 32% more to not further their education.

The most emotionally convincing part of the rally was when a student talked about why she is fighting back. Her reason was her little brother. He told her it doesn’t matter anyway because he was just going to end up in jail. As she talked about how much this issue means to her personally she started to tear up, as did other members of the audience.

This issue is personal to a lot of people, but others don’t care as deeply. At points of the rally it was almost impossible to hear over the chatting students in the back talking about activities that seemed to truly matter to them, like lunch.

The only downside to the rally was that after everyone finished talking about the issue at hand the rally turned into a liberal rant. Yes, fighting cutbacks and fighting for the teachers rights and against their pay cuts is generally more of a liberal thing to do, but this issue needs to push past party lines in order to get things accomplished. The speakers at the end of the rally didn’t help this idea. Speakers veered away from budget cuts and were talking about progressive politics, veterans for peace and the freedom party. It’s important for the students and teachers to come together on a non-political playing field and work together to have any kind of a real chance at taking back control.