Students are being forced to pay more for less. Government bureaucrats have slashed the higher education budget for the second straight year. And the cuts are only getting worse. Our tuition has ratcheted up 10% and the Post-Secondary Education Review Commission is discussing as much as a 30% increase next Fall. They have already cut classes and majors, jammed every class to bursting, layed off whole crews of UNO workers, and restricted access to labs and buildings. Dirt is piling up in the buildings and students are watching the classes they need to graduate evaporate.
The economic crisis has come home. This is a crisis created by policymakers in bed with Wall Street, not by the students, faculty, or workers at UNO, and WE WON'T PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS.
De-funding higher education is a sure way to keep Louisiana at the bottom of the heap and destroy any hope of a better future for our state.
This situation is untenable.
We urge faculty to discuss the budget cuts in their classes, the staff to organize strikes as the layoffs continue, and for students to take action against tuition increases and class cuts. Faculty, workers, students: stand together and halt the looting of public higher education in Louisiana!
20 of the 25 highest paid government employees in Louisiana are Louisiana university administrators. LSU System President John Lombardi makes $600,000 a year. What Lombardi hopes for is our silence as he dismantles the university with one hand and stuffs his pocket with the other. That is business as usual, for now, but it rests on our complacency in allowing it to function in this time of crisis.
We are the university, we can shut it down.
-A few fed up UNO students
Response: Asked about the banner, some students were excited to see something happening in regards to the budget cuts everyone is talking about on campus, while some, also against the budget cuts, thought it "didn't do anything." We will continue to experiment with tactics, and to find tactics that people feel like will actually have the possibility of "doing something." To be ignored is degrading. We realize that to attempt to get those in power to listen after having already been ignored is simply humiliating, and we don't intend to humiliate ourselves by begging those in power to stop the cuts. We will instead take back and create the kind of university we want to see. That is our goal. We get the message, Power has ignored us. So we see an end to their control over our university as the only real, lasting solution.
Solidarity to the students in struggle in California and around the world.
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