In an attempt to raise awareness about the issues surrounding public education in Wisconsin, the Rally to Save Public Education met on Library Mall Thursday afternoon.
As part of one of over 30 similar actions throughout the country, speakers at the rally included students, faculty members and a candidate for the Wisconsin State Assembly.
Speakers addressed 35 to 40 people attending the rally, with passersby stopping to listen about tuition costs for students, budget and funding cuts, and problems graduate students face.
Ben Manski, candidate for the District 77 Wisconsin State Assembly seat, said he is excited by the wave of action for public education that has finally reached UW. He talked about the movements occurring all over the country as well as throughout the world, in what he called the “Global Wave.”
“I feel a great love for our education, which is really the cornerstone of our Democratic society,” Manski said. “But I also feel rage about what is happening to our public schools, about the people on the other side of State Street passing the buck to you.”
Manski encouraged students to reach out to other students and to organize statewide to stop tuition increases by the Board of Regents, who had met the same day.
“Education should be available to everyone who wants it,” speaker and UW undergraduate Mindy Preston said.
Preston talked about students dealing with rising tuition costs. Students must choose to work throughout college, limiting valuable study time, and then must face a huge debt after leaving college.
Kevin Gibbons, a graduate student at UW and the co-president of the Teaching Assistant’s Association spoke of the advantages of having TAs on campus. He talked about the amount of work TAs do on campus to make UW run smoothly.
“Increasingly, we are teaching more and more on campus and conducting research activities, and in return we get paid below the poverty line,” Gibbons said.
UW Sociology professor Mike Bell discussed the value and power of education in Wisconsin. Bell mentioned a 2008 ranking of the world’s best universities and said UW ranked number 17 on the list.
Bell cited education as our nation’s greatest export and said we needed to restore a sense of community values to education.
“Paying taxes for education may pay for opportunities of other people’s kids, but the well-being of others’ children contributes to the well-being of all of us,” Bell said.
To fix the state of public schools in Wisconsin, UW graduate student Kaja Rebane said the priorities of the government need to change.
Rebane said she wanted to see funding going toward universities instead of prisons because “public schools are something to be proud of.”
Besides the organizers and supporters of the rally, students stopped to listen to the speakers. One student – UW sophomore Kyle Spangenberger – stopped because the speakers and the topics sounded interesting.
“I would love to have a lower tuition because I’m not getting any help with paying it and I have to rely on mostly private loans,” Spangenberger said.
Spangenberger said he knew a lot of friends settled for cheaper schools that provided less opportunities because of high tuition costs.
While he thought the rally was interesting and thought provoking, Spangenberger felt the speakers could have made a better argument about where the money to increase funding for public schools would come from, especially with the state budget already in a deficit
