Members and advocates of the United Council of UW Students gathered Saturday outside the Student Activity Center to rally against the potential rise of tuition in the UW System.
Despite the windy weather, students from over half of the 26 UW campuses promoted the 2009-2011 Statewide Biennial Budget Campaign.
Autumn Prazuch, a sophomore at UW-Marathon County, said the group's main objective is to persuade the state Legislature to freeze or lower tuition.
[Administrators are] talking about cutting financial aid, and we really want to support higher education so that more people can go to college and be able to afford to stay here,"" she said.
Participants began the rally by chanting, ""Students united will never be defeated.""
The solidarity remained throughout the event, with speeches by Josh Mann, president of the United Council of UW Students, Nicole Juan, executive director of UCUWS, and Chynna Haas, president of the UW-Madison Working Class Student Union.
Haas said the rise of tuition could cause students' grades to drop when they have to pay their own way through college.
""When they're trying to work their way through school and they're trying to work all these extra jobs, they don't have as much time to study,"" she said.
According to Mann, there is a disproportionate ratio of tuition to scholarship money in the UW System.
""Every time that we do not match our financial aid to our tuition dollars we are pricing students out of college,"" he said. ""Just because someone cannot afford it - but has academically earned the right to go to college - should not be the reason why they cannot attend.""
The UW System Board of Regents addressed financial aid in its Feb. 5 meeting. They announced over 2,000 students received need-based financial aid in 2008 because of a $1.76 million donation from John and Tashia Morgridge.
According to Juan, UW students are looking for increased grant aid from the Wisconsin Higher Education Grant, the Laws of Minority Retention Grant and the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship.
The United Council of UW Students is one of the nation's oldest and largest state student associations.
