After Budget Cuts at U. Wisconsin, Protesters Pledge to Shutdown Campus
Budget cuts occur and the response by protesters? “Shut it Down!”
The College Fix reports.
Univ. of Wisconsin protesters pledge to shut campus down over budget cuts
MADISON, Wis. – Several hundred students, professors and community activists converged at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Saturday to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts, a demonstration during which participants cheered for the end of democracy and suggested the budget plan would decimate the campus’ quality and reputation.
Lane Hall, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, took the microphone and told the restless, angry crowd that democracy cannot work as it currently stands. Lane went on to say there are other systems that America should use, even if history has an extremely negative view of them, prompting rowdy cheers from most in the crowd.
Walker recently announced his 2015-2017 budget proposal, which included approximately $300 million in budget cuts for the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years. These cuts were part of a package that included greatly increased autonomy for the system. But speakers said that they are not willing to trade budget cuts for autonomy.
Lane demanded that instead of pay cuts, the faculty members, staff and teaching assistants should be given raises, and paid a “living wage.” At the conclusion of his speech he said that if these demands were not met that they would move onto other forms of protest, that they would “shut it down.”
The crowd erupted again, chanting “shut it down, shut it down.”
Despite subzero temperatures and a windchill of -17 degrees, protesters remained mostly energetic. Those who showed up did not appear deterred by the freezing temperatures, holding signs stating “Hey Walker, the only tool I see is you” and “the most violent element of society is an uneducated legislature.”
Univ. of Wisconsin protesters pledge to shut campus down over budget cuts (The College Fix)
Comments
Funny. So I googled “what forms of government permit protest” and the only thing that came back was Democracy. So…
I think maybe Lane’s job should be one of the first on the chopping block.
I served a while as a graduate student in Mathematics at UW-Milwaukee. I see it now as a scam. They kept Masters students around in order to inflate enrolment in graduate level math classes, and so justify the large department. They had a miserably low graduation rate which they didn’t seem to care much about or want to improve on. The courses taught by graduate assistants could have been done just as well, probably better, by part-time instructors. For the most part the instruction in the graduate math classes was probably the worst I have ever had. They are not wise stewards of the public dollar.
Wisconsin has a two-year campus consisting of about 11 or 13 sites. Presumably a student gets the first two years there. They prefer to hire PhDs for those professor jobs, when the same first two years of course work is taught by graduate students in Milwaukee and Madison. The the doctorates make highly paid work for themselves while excluding the lesser credentialed. Part-time instructors teach the same classes for much less in pay. To make things worse, there is a fine system of technical colleges in Wisconsin. Many have partnerships with 4-year campuses. A student graduating from a technical college with a 3.5 can enrol at the partner 4-year campus as a Junior, not a transfer student. Why pay 4-year college tuition rates when the technical college is much less expensive? But even the technical colleges have gotten into hiring doctorates to teach first year courses. Reagan had a quote about soap being made from all the fat in that budget.
In the Wisconsin system, the campus with the highest transfer into rate was Madison. The second highest was the 2-year campuses, because students would go to a 4-year campus and flunk out, then transfer to the 2-year campus near home to get rehabilitated.
All those campuses made sense when the roads were few and poorly paved and we didn’t have the Internet. Now all those campuses are over redundant.