On the National Day of Action To Defend Public Education, students from UB and Buffalo State College, along with local community members, lined the intersection of Ellicott St. and Goodell St.
The location, within blocks of the proposed location of the UB Downtown Gateway project, signified the strategic UB 2020 plan and its related initiatives. Local students and their allies joined forces to demand accountability among those in power, accessibility to education, affordability of said education, and maintaining the quality of the public education system.
Endorsed organizations included the Graduate Student Employees Union CWA Local 1104, the United Socialist Movement of the Americas – Buffalo Chapter, UB College Republicans, UB College Democrats, Buffalo State Students for Peace, UB Students Against Sweatshops, UB Black Student Union and United University Professions – Buffalo Center.
The GSEU, which leads the coalition of groups, is demanding the passage of their pay bill by the state legislature, which would allow the implementation of the last contract and start negotiations for a new one.
"Our particular union is made up of graduate student workers and we have been working with an expired contract of three years," said Chris Buckman, chief stewart of GSEU CWA 1104. "The implementation of the contract that we reached last spring has been delayed because our pay bill can't go through state legislature. It's not fair that the administration is getting rich when we're not getting the money we deserve."
Buckman explained the reasoning for choosing the location of Thursday's rally.
"We chose the location because the UB Downtown Gateway is here and while the coalition is not against UB 2020 and does support development, we're against certain ways they want to fund it including privatization plans, raising undergraduate tuition and cutting jobs," Buckman said. "The other reason that we wanted the rally to be in this location is to be accessible to students in Buffalo.
GSEU considers the state legislature's temporary defeat of The Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act a victory, because they want the SUNY system to remain public.
Other protestors voiced disapproval of UB's purchase of McCarley Gardens, recognized by the protestors as one of Buffalo's most stable, safest low-income housing development, for an expanded medical campus.
"We are rallying to expose UB 2020 and the things they are doing to hurt students, works and professors at the university," said William Richardson, president of the UB United Socialist Movement of the Americas club. "For instance, McCarley Gardens apartment complex will be torn down in order to build a medical complex that we absolutely do not need."
Although students at the rally were against tearing down the McCarley Gardens, which were purchased for $15 million by the UB Foundation last April, protestors failed to come up with an alternative location for the Downtown Gateway Complex.
"Anyone that is from Buffalo knows that half of the buildings downtown are abandoned anyway so they can pretty much pick anywhere," Richardson said.
Richardson voiced his concern with the privatization of SUNY schools.
"What we hope is to get students to be more mobilized about these issues and to think more about what the administration does to directly affect them," Richardson said. "A lot of student thinks they can go three or four years keeping their heads low and nothing is going to happen to them but when your tuition goes up $1000 just to pay for Jeremy Jacobs' almost million dollar salary, then what?"
For more information, visit www.buyindontsellout.org
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
