When students hopped on buses and attended the #SaveUConn rally last Wednesday, the vast majority of them had one goal in mind: preventing absurd tuition hikes and making UConn a priority to Gov. Ned Lamont. Throughout this week however, many of us became quickly aware that the state government was not proposing a “budget slash” at UConn; instead, the university has simply lost additional funding from the American Rescue Plan Act for pandemic relief. #SaveUconn was a farce, orchestrated by UConn’s desire for increased spending money and exploiting students’ fears of increased tuition making education unfeasible. As last week’s rally is placed under more scrutiny, students are left to wonder, “should I still be worried about a fee bill increase?”
The short answer is yes, you should. Although the state government isn’t technically cutting UConn’s funding, administration seems fairly certain that they will need to increase student fees to ‘bridge the gap’ left by reliance on federal pandemic funding. Arguably, the administration can turn to other options such as halting ambitious new projects, cutting salaries for top administrators, decreasing the UConn Police Department’s bloated budget etc. Between the negligence towards investigating sexual assault claims, the frankly dangerous state of campus dorms and the general lack of public safety, we as students need to begin to insert our priorities back into the heart of UConn’s policy. I’d like to remind everyone that we are entitled to better conditions. We pay tuition here, and to me, that means that we should have a say in what the board of trustees’ priorities are.
With that being said, join UConn UNCHAIN in attending the board of trustees sit-in at Wilbur Cross Reading Room this Wednesday at 9 a.m. Bring signs, submit public comments and be ready to make your voices heard at a student-led rally on the stairs at 10 a.m. This is how we prevent tuition increases and guarantee a safer UConn for all of us; not USG, not the Board of Trustees, not Admin, but we the students. With collective student organizing this Wednesday, we can re-assert the student body as essential to maintaining democracy at the university as well as leveraging our buying power for a greater collective good. This is how we #SaveUConn. See y’all Wednesday.
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