Cal U students, staff protest proposed cuts
Roberto M. Esquivel/HeraldStandard.com
California University of Pennsylvania students Stephen Wolfe (left) and Kenneth Gallentine lead a mock funeral procession through the university during a rally held Tuesday to protest proposed state budget cuts to higher education funding.
Roberto M. Esquivel/HeraldStandard.comrd.com
Brandon Shuttleworth, a sociology student at California University of Pennsylvania, speaks out against proposed state budget cuts to higher education during a rally at the college Tuesday morning.
CALIFORNIA — California University of Pennsylvania students and faculty held a mock funeral procession around the campus Tuesday claiming they were “mourning the loss of public higher education” in protest of proposed state cuts in funding.
The event was organized by the California University chapter of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), the statewide professors’ union. Dr. Rick Cumings, public relations chairman for the campus union, said the coffin was meant to symbolize the inevitable death of public higher education in Pennsylvania if Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed budget is passed.
Between this year and the proposed budget for next year, higher learning institutions could see a reduction of almost 40 percent in state funding.
“This whole funeral thing might seem a bit crazy, but we need people to wake up to what is happening,” said Cumings, a professor in the Department of Communication Studies.
Cumings said it is the vast majority of students who attend the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) universities come from middle- to lower-class families and it is those students who will suffer the most from the proposed cuts.
“It is the over 117,000 students in the 14 PASSHE universities who will stay in Pennsylvania, get jobs and determine the future of Pennsylvania who are being shut out and shut down,” he said. “It is their future, their hopes they see dying a horribly unnecessary death.”
Following the processional, students and faculty members offered “eulogies” and threw gifts into the casket they deemed as memorial tokens of “hope, a future, a hand-up and a way out.”
The event was held in conjunction with all of the 14 state-owned universities’ APSCUF chapters across the state who have designated this week as an action week.