By snoadmin
LOS ANGELES – More than 200 students gathered on the steps of Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles chanting “they say cut back, we say fight back” on Monday to protest the proposal of statewide educational budget cuts.
“This is an attack on higher education,” said Louise Hendrickson, president of the University of California Student Association and senior at UC Riverside. “Education should be a priority in this state.”
Hendrickson said she feels the budget cuts will block deserving students from attending colleges and hurt those who are already there.
“We are violating the master plan,” she said.
Hendrickson was the first of many who spoke out against the budget cuts.
Students from Santa Barbara, San Diego, Riverside, Glendale and Los Angeles were present in downtown L.A. to represent their schools by shouting chants and holding signs that read, “We are students, not ATMs.”
“This is exactly what we expected from this governor and this is exactly why we worked our ass off to keep him out of office,” said Daraka Larimore-Hall, a UC Santa Barbara student.
Larimore-Hall is vice president of United Automobile Workers Local 2865 and represents more than 12,000 student workers in the UC system. He spoke of the “double hit” student workers will take with the budget cuts. He said he felt they will be hit hard with cuts to their salary and benefits, along with higher tuition fees.
Larimore-Hall said California has a bad habit of establishing good public policy but not following through.
“It’s time to say ‘no’ to that kind of short memory. It’s time to invest in the future of California,” Larimore-Hall said. “We are standing together for our future arm in arm across campuses, across systems, between students and employees, parents and workers, all of us together saying, ‘Invest in California [and] respect the general plan. Get back to education.'”
Students marched from Pershing Square to the governor’s Los Angeles office. Their chants were met with honks of support from passersby. A couple students held giant debt checks made out to Gov. Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez.
Protestors crowded the street in front of the governor’s office, attracting groups of spectators. The picketing ended with a solidarity clap and a promise that “we will be back.”
The threatening budgets cuts have brought students from California State Universities, University of California schools and California’s community colleges together for the first time.
“We are coming together because this isn’t an individual system issue. This is an attack on higher education as a whole,” Hendrickson said.
“We feel that we are hurting enough as it is. We want to be educated. We need that money to continue that education,” said Vangie Jimenez, a Glendale Community College student.
She said she feels that the governor must open his eyes to the students’ needs and the more students who get involved, the more he will be forced to pay attention to their needs.
“We need to have our voices heard. We need to let him know we need our education,” Jimenez said.
Protests will continue throughout the following months. A calendar of events can be accessed through The Students’ for California’s website at StudentsForCalifornia.org.
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