Students across the state fight Corbett’s proposed cuts

Three weeks ago, Pitt senior Nick Brink didn’t picture himself becoming the leader of a… Three weeks ago, Pitt senior Nick Brink didn’t picture himself becoming the leader of a state-wide student organization.

The neuroscience major is now the acting president of the Coalition of Pennsylvania Students, an organization founded after Gov. Tom Corbett proposed halving state spending on Pitt and other Pennsylvania universities in his budget address two weeks ago.

Brink and the 11 members of the group’s board — which is comprised of students throughout the state — are trying to bridge a gap between various universities in the two state-supported systems: the four state-related universities and the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

“There was not one organization that wanted to coordinate with all schools,” he said. “We’ve worked nonstop over spring break to get all of the organization started.”

He created a Facebook event hours after Corbett’s budget address two weeks ago, “GOV CORBETT 50% Appropriation Reduction for Higher Education- UNACCEPTABLE” that now has more than 22,000 attendees.

The cuts, part of Gov. Tom Corbett’s first budget, amount to almost $900 million in education spending and would reduce Pitt’s $185 million appropriation by more than half, to $80.2 million. State legislators will hold hearings on the budget throughout April before setting a date to vote on it.

Accounting for inflation, the appropriation — which accounted for 9 percent of Pitt’s budget this year — would be the smallest Pitt has received since becoming state-related in the 1960s. Pitt will also lose more than $10 million in federal funds this coming year. Its total budget is more than $1.9 billion.

Corbett called his $27.3 billion, 1,100-page proposal a “reality-based budget.” It includes no tax increases — in line with his campaign promises — and cuts state spending to 2008 levels.

The initial outcry over the Internet among students has turned into organized activism from both long-established and more recently formed student organizations across the state.

Graduate and Professional Student Assembly President Nila Devanath helped Brink organize on Facebook and launch the Coalition of Pennsylvania Students’ website. Brink has also worked to promote GPSA’s online petition against the cuts — which by Friday had more than 4,000 signatures from students at more than two dozen universities across the state.

Devanath also emphasized the importance of Pitt Day in Harrisburg on April 5. Student Government Board will bus students to the capitol building for a day of lobbying legislators in person.

“We want to fill as many buses as we can,” she said. “When you are talking to that legislator or that staffer face-to-face, it’s hard to be ignored by them.”

Other student leaders have focused most of their advocacy on their campuses, or coordinated through the Pennsylvania Association of State-Related Students, an organization formed last semester to support public funding for Pitt, Penn State University, Temple University and Lincoln University.

“There’s no need to re-invent the wheel here,” said Christian Ragland, the president of Penn State’s University Park Undergraduate Association, referring to the new coalition.

“I admire [Brink’s] efforts and I hope to continue to help him in the future,” he said. “But we need to get behind the organizations that are already established.”

The efforts of the state’s most populous campus — with more than 40,000 students — have focused on getting stories out to legislators. In the last week, Penn State has gathered video stories from students on its campus, and Ragland said UPUA wants to organize a phone bank to reach out to legislators in the next few weeks.

The phone bank is similar to a letter writing campaign on Pitt’s campus sponsored by SGB and GPSA that kicks off tomorrow. Devanath said that Chancellor Mark Nordenberg is scheduled to speak at 6 p.m. to start the campaign, which runs through Wednesday.

The two groups will also coordinate district lobby visits and calling days.

But SGB President Molly Stieber said the biggest event will be a rally on March 30. Although details about the location have yet to be finalized, Stieber said she was “in talks” with city administration to possibly shut down Bigelow Boulevard and hold the rally there.

Timed less than a week before Pitt’s Day in Harrisburg, the rally would not be an SGB event. Stieber said she wanted it to be “student-driven, student-led.”

Pitt students will go to Harrisburg the same day as Penn State’s students, although Ragland said that the two schools did not coordinate the event. He thinks that reaching out to legislators — especially this year — will be the best way for students to enact change.

“Students didn’t really understand the importance of days like that until this year,” he said. “I think that the protest, the activism, plays a defined role in this process, but it is up to the legislators to vote.”

Assistant News Editor Olivia Garber contributed to this report.