Day of Action protesters rally against UCLA, UC budget cuts
Students demonstrate at the “October 7 Day of Action for Public Education” Rally in Bruin Plaza, in response to the increase in tuition.
By James Barragan
Oct. 7, 2010 3:40 p.m.
Tensions ran high Thursday as speakers and students expressed their discontent with the administration at a rally in Meyerhoff Park to protest against wage cuts for university workers and student fee increases.
The rally, which began at 11 a.m., drew a crowd of about 100 people outside Kerckhoff Hall. Protesters then marched across campus to different locations associated with the university’s budget cuts, chanting slogans supporting students and more accessibility to higher education.
Representatives from different parts of the campus population spoke, including students, lecturers, librarians and workers.
Randy Fallows, a lecturer in writing programs, spoke about the privatization of the university and urged the administration to remember its mission statement of accessibility, affordability and diversity.
Fallows added that his program has been especially hard hit by the budget cuts because it is mostly comprised of lecturers, who do not have the same tenure contracts as professors.
The organizers of the event plan to get more people informed and organized in order to come up with reasonable solutions to the budget cut, said Jason Ball communications director for the Graduate Student Association.
