[media-credit name=’Ben Smidt’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]University of Wisconsin System students rallied at the Capitol Friday afternoon in protest of tuition increases by Gov. Jim Doyle and the state legislature.

The rally kicked off on Library Mall featuring live music, the Mad Breakers dance crew, spoken-word poetry and speakers from both the Associated Students of Madison and the Student Labor Action Coalition, which were among dozens of organizations sponsoring the event.

Students cried, "Lower tuition or we'll come in yo' kitchen" as they marched up State Street toward the Capitol with picket signs, drums and bullhorns.

"Everyone on campus — the undergraduates, the teaching assistants, the professors, the staff — are suffering from the squeeze of the state budget," Peter Brinson, a UW sociology teaching assistant and graduate student, said.

Brinson was one of hundreds of students who showed up to fight against what many described as a "back-door privatization" that is deterring the UW System from creating a more diverse student body.

Nino Amato, a former UW System regent, was the event's keynote speaker.

"The idea of establishing [UW] was to have affordable and quality education for everyone. That no longer is the case," Amato said.

By substituting increased general revenue sharing and General Purpose Revenue dollars that everyone pays for, Amato said "we can make [UW] a more vital, acceptable university for all. If we don't, we are going down a path of privatization, back-door privatization."

Amato related the privatization of the UW System to what he described as silent racism and polite apartheid.

"There are too many people on the Board of Regents who believe that Jim Crow, Sr. is dead and racism is gone forever," he said. "That is not the case because Jim Crow, Jr. is alive and well."

Amato's statements were met with roaring ovation from the diverse body of protesters.

Regent Vice President David Walsh disagreed with Amato and said he believes accusations of privatization and economic profiling are uninformed.

"Nino [Amato] has been a little late to the facts lately," Walsh said in a phone interview Sunday night. "He will say anything for his headlines. It's easy for him to make accusations, but he has no solution."

Walsh said tuition increases in the regents' new budget proposal would not affect the lowest-income families.

"If [Amato] had shown up or actually read through the proposal, he'd know this," he said.

UW senior Lyntrell Smith serves on the ASM council and relies on both grants and financial aid for tuition.

"If the tuition hikes increase, that's when they disenfranchise a lot of people who depend on grants and federal aid," Smith said. "The topic is not a black and white issue, it's a people issue."

Smith added people who come from low-income households might not always be able to afford to send themselves or their children to school.

"If they keep raising tuition, it shows they don't want us here," Smith said. "If they did, they'd make it affordable for us."

While student loans provide an alternative source of funds, the resulting debt can be overwhelming, even before graduation. Amato described student loans as "throwing rocks at a drowning person," an inexcusable requirement for a public university like UW.

After the rally, Amato reiterated his stance on the system's economic discrimination.

"If you start raising tuition, you're going to affect diversity, you're going to impact ethnic diversity [and] economic diversity. What you have going on is a hidden, subtle racism."