Representatives from student organizations across campus attended a rally Thursday planned by the Multicultural Student Coalition to protest the Student Services Finance Committee decision to deny the group’s funding.
As MCSC played music from loudspeakers in East Campus Mall, the group’s Executive Staff Member Nneka Akubeze said she was pleased with the variety of student representatives supporting them.
“What you’re going to notice is that when you stand together, it is impossible for them to push us down,” she said. “With your voice and your solidarity, we actually can accomplish the goals that we have set forth.”
Matt Kozlowski, chair of Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group, said MCSC is one of several groups SSFC has unfairly denied funding in recent years, including WISPIRG in 2010.
International Socialist Organization and Student Labor Action Coalition member Tina Trevino-Murphy mirrored Kozlowski’s opinions, describing her experience with the Campus Women’s Center two years ago when SSFC denied them funding.
“This is a systematic problem,” she said. “It’s not actually a matter of there not being enough money, it’s that they purposely are making rules that don’t fund specific types of groups.”
While SSFC denied MCSC eligibility for funding due to lack of direct services to students, Associated Students of Madison Chair Allie Gardner said the group’s services directly affected her UW experience through Intercultural Dialogues, a course MCSC facilitates.
“It has completely changed my outlook as a student,” Gardner said. “[ASM] can’t just serve a majority of students. We have to serve every single student on this campus.”
