Save the University of Illinois

UIC faculty and students will gather together in big numbers on Monday, March 8th, in what will certainly mark a significant moment in the unfolding of the university budget crisis. Over three hundred faculty members will take a common furlough day on Monday to voice their collective dissatisfaction with the handling of the crisis by the state and the university.

According to the day's itinerary, participants will gather at the first floor of the State of Illinois Building at 9 am. At 9:15 am, they will present a letter to Governor Pat Quinn.

At 9:30 am, a press conference will be held by Dick Simpson on the first floor of the State of Illinois Building. From 11 am to 2 pm, meetings with state legislators, media, and stakeholders will be held at various locations, followed by a Roundtable Discussion entitled "Putting the 'Public' Back in Public Higher Education" from 2:00 to 5:00pm. Further details regarding the day's activities can be found on the website http://uicjointfurlough.wordpress.com.

Last Thursday, along with many other public universities across the country, University of Illinois students and staff participated in the March 4 day of Action to Defend Public Education. At the University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign, over 300 members of the UC, United Coalition of students, workers and faculty, staged a march and rallied "for an accessible, diverse, and democratic" university. At UIC, concerned local figures spoke at Student Center East from 12-2, followed by a rally in the quad at 2. One graduate student in Anthropology created a replica of University Hall out of boxes, cut it in half and chanted "Chop from the top!" while playing his trumpet.

At 5:00, members of the union SEIU Local 73, including UIC employees that had recently been laid off, gathered in front of University Hall to hold a Soup Kitchen and protest.

Although the soup was soon packed away, the protestors remained, determined to "put a human face on who is losing their jobs to the Chancellor and the Provost," as Joe Iosbaker, one of the 19 people from the union that was laid off in the first round of layoffs, explained.

"I think the people making these decisions just see numbers on a page or on a computer screen."

As part of his efforts to get the attention of top UIC administrators, Iosbaker rewrote the lyrics of the Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy" and passed out lyric sheets at the protest so the entire crowd could join in. The crowd, led by Dorothy Watson, sang and shouted out the new lyrics with gusto: "Is UIC crazy? / They must be crazy / If they think that we may / Go quietly."

"It seems they are mostly targeting those with seniority," Isobaker said of the recent layoffs. "They can replace people with new hires and pay them a lot less. We've gotten raises through the union every year for about 20 years, since 1993.

"It isn't right," Isobaker continued. "It doesn't have to be this way. All the state has to do is borrow … they're going to get the money from the state eventually. We're challenging these layoffs, and we've been able to stop some of them."

The recent round of layoffs was only the first in two or three other rounds that are expected in the spring.

For more about the effect of budget shortfalls on the university, see our opinion section this week as we have a special blowout dedicated to the subject.