Massachusetts students rally against cutbacks
1989Mark Schneider 1989-11Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 5 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 5
SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1989 5 BOSTON-Between 15,000 and 20,000 college and university students descended upon the Massachusetts State House here on Oct. 18 to protest cutbacks in the state higher education budget. The protest was the largest State House demonstration since May 1970, and served as a stunning rebuke to Governor Michael Dukakis.
The protesters thronged the State House steps, bearing official school banners and hand-drawn posters, then held a rally on the Boston Common. After student and labor leaders decried the senselessness of education cutbacks, the students surged through the halls of the State House in a mass lobbying effort.
Students by bus west corner of the state, and from Cape Cod in the south to Salem in the north. (The previous week, 2000 students from the state's University of Lowell held a separate rally.)
The protesters were overwhelmingly youthful undergraduates involved in a social protest for the first time. Faculty members and administrators stood in the streets and chanted slogans along with the students. The rally was backed by the Presidents of Massachusetts' Public Colleges and Universities association, the Board of Regents, and the State Student Association.
Education leaders, including former supporters of the Governor, are furious at proposed 5 percent across-the-board cuts in the higher education budget. During Dukakis' 1988 presidential bid, a state budget deficit here was hidden by chicanery to preserve the Governor's image as a "good manager."
The fraudulence of the debate in the 1988 presidential election is now illuminated by the situation of Massachusetts higher education. The "education President" holds the White House, the "education Governor" holds the State House, and public education is being gutted.
The situation is not much better in elementary schools and high schools. In the last fiscal year, 5000 teaching jobs were lost statewide. The Boston Globe reported recently on a three-year veteran of the Brockton public schools with a master's degree in English from Harvard who was laid off from a $22,000 a year job.
Some proponents of higher education understandably feel that the cuts can only be stopped by increased taxation, and have promulgated a ballot referendum for a 1 percent increase in the state sales tax. The burden of sales taxes, however, are felt most by the poor. Another proposal, which would create $300 million by closing unfair tax loopholes for big business, is also gaining ground and may appear on the ballot.