In an attempt to stimulate and inform the Skyline student body, Skyline Against the Cuts held an in-quad informative event on Thursday, Oct. 27 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The event, organized by student Michael Madden (who has been involved in Occupy movements throughout the Bay Area), was a collective effort made by Skyline Against the Cuts, the Black Student Union, Gay-Straight Alliance and LASO. Students’ voices could be heard over loudspeakers in the quad as they called out to fellow students in an attempt to promote activism and action against ever-increasing budget cuts.
“The situation with the cuts [in California] is becoming very serious,” Madden said. “We’re here with an essential proposal to actually block the UC Regents from meeting on the 16 of November at UCSF, where they will vote on increasing fees at UC campuses 81 percent over three or four years, making total tuition come to $22,000, excluding books and housing. We’re talking about the death of public education here in California.”
Despite the fact that they are lacking their original organizer in addition to their faculty adviser, Skyline professor Michael Hoffman, Skyline Against the Cuts garnered
interest from students looking to make a difference.
“I started helping pass out flyers and started getting really involved in [Skyline Against the Cuts],” says first-semester student Elisa Jimenez, who volunteered at the event. “It’s affecting [students]. There are a lot of people that we passed out flyers to and they [say] they’ll come by, and you know they’re not actually going to come by because they’re not that interested. But it’s because they don’t know; they don’t know exactly what’s happening. We need to educate them to show them that this is how it’s affecting you, and this is what’s going to happen.”
The green table cloth donning the Skyline Against the Cuts table caught the eye of several students who, upon walking up to the table, could pick up information on Skyline Against the Cuts and sign their name on a pledge sheet to participate in events during November. Students
who wrote their email address on this list will be sent emails informing them of upcoming opportunities to organize and protest.
“We want classes!” says secondsemester student Gabriela Saucedo. “We need this. This is our education—that’s what we need. It’s simple, isn’t it?”
According to an informative sheet titled “Budget Cuts and Skyline College,” “Enrollment in community colleges has grown by 44 percent in the last 15 years, yet funds have continually been divested. The college system would have grown 5.5 percent in 2009-10, but instead has shrunk by 4.8 (percent)!” This was but one of the many facts given to students in hopes of motivating students to act.
“A right to education is being eaten away much faster than we would have expected because things are becoming so serious,” Madden said. “What we’re really talking about when we’re talking about cuts is we’re talking about the end of access to education for people of color.”
For more information on what you can do to participate in upcoming acts of civil disobedience, students are welcomed to attend Skyline Against the Cuts meetings, which take place every Wednesday
