The university has laid off or eliminated seniority for 90 teachers and staff members, according to Amber Cooper, field organizer for the university’s graduate employee organization. UIC administrators have also indicated they might increase tuition and student fees, she said.
Cooper and other members of the United In Campaign Against Budget Cuts Coalition picketed the University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting at UIC after addressing the board earlier in the morning.
“We came out today to this public meeting to tell them that they can’t be raising tuition,” Cooper said. “Increasing tuition harms working-class people who need to be able to go to this university. So if the tuition is increased again, every dollar’s increase is another student who’s not going to be able to afford to come here.”
A spokeswoman for the University of Illinois Board of Trustees declined to comment Thursday on the coalition’s concerns, and UIC officials could not be reached for comment.
During a break between sessions of the board’s closed-door meeting, Trustee Devon Bruce said that he was not told by the administration that people had been laid off.
“My understanding was that the administration was potentially placing people in furloughs,” Bruce said. “I was unaware we had laid off 90 people. That is deeply concerning.”
Board of Trustee member David Dorris was also not aware of any layoffs.
“People at the bottom cannot be cut,” Dorris said. “We need to protect those people who do the work every day. We may have budget problems but it cannot be put on their backs.”
Despite a slow start to the rally, there was no lack of enthusiasm as picketers chanted and waved brightly colored signs.
Sarita K. Heer, a UIC graduate student, said that as a teaching assistant in the art history department, she had to pay a quarter of her stipend back to the university in fees.
“I had to pay $1,199 for my tuition differential fee, which means that my stipend was going right back to the college,” Heer said. “That put me below the cost of living.”
Heer said that the fee is “sneaky” and “unfair” and that the university cannot tell students that tuition is not being increased and then take stipend money to make up the difference.
“The university needs to understand that they cannot balance their corrupt budget on our backs. They need to find the rest of the budget somewhere else,” Heer said.
In addition to protesting tuition and fee hikes, the coalition also called for no layoffs.
Cooper said that board members have promised to talk about the coalition’s concerns at length, a talk she said is crucial to making change.
“They want to start a conversation but we need to make sure it happens,” Cooper said.
Leave a comment
Comments feed for this article