Students have taken to activism but they’d be better off doing fundraising.

NBC News reports.

Budget Crisis Threatens Chicago State University, Activists Step Up

Student leaders at Chicago State University are calling on Illinois state lawmakers to put politics aside and agree on a budget that will keep their school open.

“We are in the midst of a budget crisis,” said Charles Preston, 25, and a senior at the South Side Chicago institution. “It is a fight we shouldn’t have to fight.”

Since July 2015, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly have battled over the state’s multimillion-dollar budget. According to reports, Rauner has called for a proposed 31 percent cut to higher education as a means of “cutting waste,” but Democrats have fought to keep those cuts to just 6.5 percent. CSU and other publicly funded post-secondary institutions are caught in the middle.

CSU, which has roughly 4,500 students, receives about 30 percent of its budget from the state of Illinois. That number translates to roughly $36 million in state appropriations. The school also receives roughly $5 million in MAP (Monetary Award Program) grants and $1.6 million in state-funded merit scholarships — from which many of the students of color benefit.

Preston and about a hundred others took their fight to the Illinois statehouse a week after President Obama visited Springfield on the anniversary of his 2008 campaign launch.

Strategically timed to Governor’s budget address, faculty and students filled three buses sponsored by the Chicago Urban League and rallied. Their protest began at the Abraham Lincoln monument and then moved inside to the governor’s office and general assembly offices.

“Police had barricaded inside the governor’s office,” Preston said. “We were allowed to protest inside the building, but only outside of the governor’s office and General assembly chambers.”