300 rally to save UConn funding from budget cuts

HARTFORD — Amid chants of “tax the rich,” six busloads of UConn students on Friday rallied against a Republican budget that includes hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to the university and the state’s other institutions of higher education.

About 300 students, faculty and union supporters first gathered in a park outside the Legislative Office Building, then inside to lobby lawmakers on a day when the vast majority of the 151 House members and 36 senators were absent.

But the event was another in a series of public statements against a GOP budget that barely passed the House and Senate last week, with three Democratic votes in the Senate and five in the House, and which Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has promised to veto.

“When almost no one was looking, the state Senate and House passed a budget that’s so completely awful, even the bill’s sponsors did not believe there was a chance it would pass,” said Thomas Bontly, a philosophy professor at UConn who is president of the American Association of University Professors chapter there. “I can’t believe that the people who voted for this actually knew what they were voting for.”

Republicans say the proposed GOP budget cuts total about $244 million over two years, but Bontly said they are closer to $300 million, with changes that could cut down on the time professors spend on research, as well as drastic cuts in student aid. Malloy’s budget plan would cut the university by $50 million.

“Our message to the Legislature and the governor: please do not torpedo the flagship university,” he said. Please do not let your great state university become a casualty of partisan warfare. Please do not squander the state’s investment in building a great state university that not only educates our young people but is also essential to building their future; to building Connecticut’s economic viability.”

Bontly said the protracted, historic budget battle is the result of generations of deferred pension obligation that Malloy has been chipping away at during his nearly seven years in office.

“For decades the state of Connecticut failed to save for pension benefits it promised employees,” he said. “For decades the state ran up all kinds of debt on the state credit card. Now that debt is coming due and no one wants to pay it. So what’s the plan. Stick it to UConn. Stick it to higher ed.”

Signs included “Save UConn Save the future” and “We are the future keep us alive.”

Aside from UConn, the cuts would affect the four other state universities, a dozen community colleges, and an online degree college.

Supporters of higher education said the GOP-led budget would slash the budget of Central Connecticut State University by $93 million over two years, and that the other three state universities — Western, Eastern and Southern — would face similar shortfalls.

They also say that more than 15,000 students would see their financial aid evaporate.

Friday’s rally was not the only one in recent days staged to protest education cuts.

On Wednesday, there was a rally attended by 1,000 students on UConn’s Storrs campus and another protest took place the same day at the UConn Health Center in Farmington.

On Thursday, labor unions protested the GOP plan on the steps of the Capitol, and much of that ire was directed at cuts to higher education.

And on Tuesday, UConn rolled out a short video on Twitter narrated by Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma that questioned the wisdom of cuts put forth by Republicans.

But Senate Republican President Pro Tem Len Fasano, RNorth Haven, this week defended the GOP budget, along with its cuts to higher education, saying that UConn supporters are using “the most Draconian language they can find.”

And Pam Staneski, R-Milford, said that the cuts to state colleges were the result of “some very hard choices,” and that there are scores of other needs, such as aid to the intellectually disabled and the Meals of Wheels program, that must be met.