East Paradise

Though many things are tolerated in Las Vegas, a proposed 22% budget cut to Nevada education is not one of them.

In response to the $110 million budget cuts proposed by Governor Jim Gibbons, UNLV, Nevada State College and CSN students walked out of their classes Tuesday morning and rallied at the Pida Plaza in protest.

An estimated 1,000 students and faculty gathered outside on the UNLV campus.

When asked about the protest turnout, Chancellor Dan Klaich said, “I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s time to put a face on what the budget cuts mean.”

After rallying for close to an hour on campus, buses shuttled students to the Grant Sawyer Building to showcase their concerns directly to legislators, who were busy inside discussing the state budget.

For close to three hours, over 400 students, faculty and teacher union members huddled in the rain and raised their voices and their concerns over an intercom.

“I’m an out of state student, when I came here 2 years ago each credit was $114 if these budget cuts were to go up and tuition were to hike 48%, it would be about $256.75 a credit. That is insane. A lot of students would not be able to go to school anymore,” said Jon Goldman, campus life director for UNLV CSUN student government.

As their demonstration continued, legislators, who also sit on the Interim Finance Committee, began to emerge from the building to speak to the students and show that their voices were being heard.

“Can there be some level of cuts? Yes. But can it be 30%? No. We won’t be able then to be poised for economic recovery. We won’t have the graduates to help the economy recover, and then we’re just having a self-fulfilling prophecy of not being able to see the economy grow once again, so you have to be careful when you’re considering these budgets,” said Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley.

Though the budget cut protests efforts have been on going for the past one and a half years, they have shown previous success. In the 2009 Legislative Session, Governor Gibbons had proposed a 36% cut to education, as a result from the many efforts of students and faculty the final cut to higher education was 13%.

Now with an additional 22% proposed cut to be added to the previous 13%, students continue to fight to save their state’s education system.

-Nikki Villoria