UW students who have suffered massive tuition increases and state aid decreases know how state employees without contracts feel. That is why they are all joining together for an April 21 rally.
Friends in need
By
Josh Healey
Two good friends of mine are transferring out of UW-Madison after this semester because they can no longer afford the school’s tuition. I have three more friends who are in Iraq fighting a war they do not believe in because they thought joining the military was the only way they could pay their tuition bills. And I have many more friends in my hometown of Washington, D.C. who faced the barriers of poverty, isolation, and violence and were lucky to graduate from high school, let alone attend college.
It was with those friends in mind that I joined with other UW-Madison students in crashing a luncheon talk by UW System president Kevin Reilly called “Keeping the Public in the Public University.” How can we “keep” the public in the public university, we demanded of Reilly, when so many members of our society are already excluded? For the University of Wisconsin to be truly a “public” institution it needs to be more than just state-funded; it needs to be open and accessible to the entire population. No less a source than The Wisconsin Idea says, “The borders of the university are the borders of the state.”
In all honesty, tuition should be free. Even President Reilly admitted as much to us privately at the luncheon. The problem, however, is that when Reilly goes to meet with Governor Jim Doyle and Assembly speaker John Gard this week, as he will, he is not going to convey that same message to them. Rather, he will accept that the state’s billion-dollar priorities are corporations, prisons, and property taxes, and thus UW students – not to mention people relying on BadgerCare or expecting the DNR to really preserve the environment – have to beg for pennies in the budget cycle.
UW students do not have any friends among either party at the state Capitol. While Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan and Republican Rep. Robin Kreibich support students on some issues, the fact is that they are not power holders in their respective party caucuses. The only way students can win any real change is to demand it—as the 230,000 striking students in Quebec, Canada, have shown. They are about to win their campaign against tuition hikes there.
We do have some friends, however. Another major constituency that is angry and organized against Doyle and the Republicans is the state employee unions. Eleven of our state employees’ 19 bargaining units are still working without 2003-2005 contracts because of Doyle’s insistence on increasing their health care costs. In response, AFSCME and AFT, the two unions representing the most public employees, are holding a massive rally on April 21 at the Capitol in Madison. Recognizing student support for the Teaching Assistants Association strike last year the unions have asked that UW students join the protest and bring our demands along. Essentially, our goals are the same: We are against privatization and for a state budget that taxes the rich and gives the rest of us a chance.
Buses are coming in from throughout Wisconsin and at least seven UW campuses are mobilizing for a rare showing of student-worker solidarity. I will attend the rally with those of my friends who are lucky enough to be able to afford to attend our great university. Think about yourself and your friends, and who you think our state government needs to be serving who it is currently failing. Then maybe you can join thousands of us on Thursday, April 21, as we share that vision with our good friends Jim, John and the rest.
April 19, 2005
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Josh Healey is a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition and the MultiCultural Student Coalition at UW-Madison.
