Close to 200 concerned citizens filed into a Humanities lecture hall Wednesday for an “emergency meeting” held by the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants’ Association to discuss Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget bill and plan an organized community response.
TAA Co-Presidents Eleni Schirmer and Michael Billeaux spoke to students, faculty, community members and various campus student groups to go over the proposal, what it means and how to organize action against it.
“It seemed like there were a lot of questions about what we’re going to do now, and a lot of these conversations were happening with despair and in isolation,” Schirmer said. “We wanted to bring people together to say we’re all having those thoughts, so let’s come together and make it happen.”
The meeting included an informational overview of the budget bill and the general process of how a budget is proposed, approved and made into law. The $300 million budget cuts planned to the UW System was a hot topic, as well as the university becoming a public authority and the tuition hikes many believe will come along with it.
“It’s a promise to raise tuition, and in the event of protests to keep tuition from going up, to crush those protests,” Billeaux speculated.
Schirmer and Billeaux previewed events for the next month, including demonstrations at upcoming Board of Regents meetings, sit-ins at Bascom Hall and a tentative Valentine’s Day protest at Library Mall.
One common theme throughout the meeting was the necessity of collaboration between students, faculty, the public and administration across all UW System schools.
The TAA also opened the meeting up for discussion among community members to gauge their commitment to protests and other activism. In general, the public responded enthusiastically and supported ideas of sit-ins, walk-outs and protests, but there was little consensus over what the next step should be.
“I can say the thing we shouldn’t be doing is nothing, and to say it’s a done deal,” Schirmer said. “In 2011 with Act 10 we saw that actually saying something does make a difference.”
