Protesters Occupy Student Services Building to Defend Public Education

Student Activities Coordinator Jordan Davis speaks at the protest (Photo credit: Ashley Helms)

It’s no secret that Purchase College is filled with outspoken individuals. And recently, these same individuals united in protest and wielded homemade signs and microphones.

Just after 1 p.m. on Thursday, March 4, students occupied the first and second floors of the Student Services building to protest against budget cuts, a lack of student representation, tuition hikes caused by a decentralization of tuition, and above all, the Empowerment and Innovation Act.

Under the current legislative model, tuition has already risen by 14 percent, according to the Walk Out’s Wordpress blog. If enacted, the Empowerment Act will allow SUNY schools to set their tuition rates at 2.5 times the price of the Higher Education Price Index’s average, currently at 3.9 percent.

It would also allow for hikes of up to 9.73 percent per year. The blog said that the act would also allow a student’s tuition rate to be decided by their area of study, making labs and areas of study like photography more expensive.

Sophomore Ghia Vitale, a student participator in the meetings leading up to the protest, said the change in tuition is appalling and unjust. “It defies what our country was built on,” she said.

Elise Fisch, sophomore, said she thinks the hikes and cuts are silly, but that she doesn’t believe her major of creative writing, would be effected. “People will end up doing things they don’t want to do because it’s cheaper,” she said.

SUNY students will be kept in the dark on their tuition bills in the fall due to the constant changes in plans, and the college will have no say in how they lease state-owned land. Purchase students chanted for administrators to take control where possible, but Vitale said that the administration could only do so much.

“There was an accomplishment on a grass routes level,” she said.

Jon Stogner, senior, said that the idea is to get something up to Albany, where the decisions are made. “The problem is that our school doesn’t have control over this. It’s Albany that has control,” he said.

Private-public partnerships were also a cause of the protest. This is a shift towards a complete corporatization of public education in some students’ eyes.

Vitale said that the changes are just a reflection of our bad economy, and that public schools are becoming hard to fund. “They’re obviously not very public,” she said.

In addition to speeches and musical acts, students also composed a letter to a local representative saying why the Empowerment Act should not be instated, and that students should have a say in veto power. Each participant wrote his or her own message.

“I told him that our generation is already so vapid that taking away education will cause further leaders of the world to plummet into a cultural and intellectual depression,” Vitale said.

To feed the hungry youth, the local chapter Food Not Bombs came to the rescue. Food Not Bombs is a national organization, founded in Cambridge, MA, and their motto is that money is worth being spent on food for the needy.

“The literature talks about how all this money in the government is spent on war and weapons and bombs when there are people that are homeless and starving,” Stogner said.

The food was free to those at the protest, and came from donations and dumpsters of stores that were ridding themselves of items at the end of the day.

As the day progressed into night, a sit in began to support equal representation of veto power on the college government, split into thirds between the students, faculty, and the Purchase College President Thomas J. Schwarz.

“We have a say, we don’t want to get left out,“ said Isaiah Campbell, sophomore. On Friday, March 6, protestors blocked Student Services workers from entering in an attempt at negotiation. Schwarz could not come out to speak, as he did the first day.

“We’re not going to let this die down,” said Campbell.

Amanda Diaz, EOP Academic Assistant, was working the day of the protest, and said that it was a challenge to do so. She was also doing interviews for the fall semester while it was going on.

“A student with her mom couldn’t get through the crowd. They had to go through the registrar,” she said. “I had to explain what was going on, I didn’t want to get them scared.”

Despite the challenges, workers were supportive of the cause. “Budget cuts have an effect on EOP and students,” Diaz said. “It’s alarming to everyone.”

“I was heartened to see students involve themselves in such activity,” said Sara Connolly, Study Abroad and Fellowship Advisor. “It demonstrates commitment rather than complacency.”