Students hold rally against future budget cuts

UCF joined universities across the country in a nationwide protest against cuts to education funding in front of Millican Hall on Thursday.

The protest took place from noon to 2 p.m. and was part of the "March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education." It was the first ever student-government sponsored rally at UCF.

Stephen Mortellaro, the Student Government Association's Director of Governmental Affairs, said he helped organize the rally with SGA President Brian Peterson after students from the Student Labor Action Project approached him with the idea.

Besides SLAP, various registered student organizations, including NORML, Students for a Democratic Society, College Democrats, College Republicans, the Young Communist League, Darfur Awareness and the Student/Farmworker Alliance also participated in the rally.

Kelsey Fitzpatrick, a sophomore interdisciplinary studies major and representative of NORML, said students were trying to let UCF administrators know that education should always be their top priority.

"We're basically just trying to stand out here and give President Hitt the message and everyone in Millican Hall this message that this is what the students want — that we don't want our programs to be cut," she said. "Because, obviously, he hasn't gotten the message before."

While UCF organizations participating in the rally encouraged students walking by Millican Hall to join them and sign petitions, they also displayed signs with messages like, "Fund education, not war," and held up a giant pair of black, cardboard scissors that had paper cutouts of the words, "No more," pasted onto them.

Several speakers, including Mortellaro, NORML President Tyler Smith, UCF history professor Vibert White, District 24 Congressional candidate Paul Partyka, SGA President-Elect Michael Kilbride, Student/Farmworker Alliance representative Meghan Cohorst and SLAP President David Fernandez, gave presentations projected to students near Millican Hall, the library and the Reflecting Pond on large speakers.

Mortellaro, who was the first to speak, explained where education funding comes from, how much it has been cut over the last two years and how that has affected students.

He said the $77.2 million the university has lost has caused more classes to be taught online or get canceled and increased already high student-to-teacher ratios. The key to solving this problem, as well as other state budget issues, according to Mortellaro, is to invest in higher education.

"It is higher education, specifically at our university and other universities across the state, that is going to bring us out of this recession," he said. "It is an educated workforce and high-paying jobs that is going to bring our state out of this recession."

White, the only UCF professor to speak at the rally, said he is tired of watching students get locked out of the classes they need and change their majors because of budget issues.

He said he was disappointed in professors who were afraid to speak at the event and didn't care if any administrators, or Charlie Crist himself, heard him expressing his opinion.

"I don't give a damn, because they must know the truth," he said.

Partyka, one of the last speakers at the rally, was a high school teacher, coach and chamber president for the Oviedo-Winter Springs Regional Chamber before he decided to run against Suzanne Kosmas in this year's congressional election.

He said the education system in Florida will no longer have a "world class status" if state legislators don't start eliminating unnecessary programs before putting education on the chopping block.

"Education is not a luxury, it's a necessity," he said.
 

Editor's note: While a student in this story mentions rallying the administration, the intent of the event was to inform the Florida Legislature, not the administration of UCF, that the participants disagreed with budget cuts.