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Students Say No To Cuts: Vets Join With RSB to Fight Attacks on Schools

By VVAW

The ability to obtain an education is under increasing attack today, more than in any previous period of time. As the economic crisis deepens, students across the country are faced with huge tuition hikes, cutbacks in instructors, classes and financial aid and numerous services. But students, refusing to sit back as thousands are driven out of school, are responding with huge demonstrations, led in many places by the Revolutionary Student Brigade, a student organization of the Revolutionary Communist Party, have taken the struggle to terrified trustees, administrators and state government, meeting with heavy police intimidation and outright attacks.

In New York 10,000 students marched on the state capitol in Albany on March 16, braving a 20-inch snowstorm, to demonstrate their anger against cutbacks in the State University (SUNY) and City University (CUNY) of New York. Fed up with months of heavier and heavier cuts covered by false promises and secret plans, over 2,000 of the students stormed the doors of the Statehouse, rolling over cops and student government marshals, and rallied inside the building.

This militant action, led by the CUNY Fight Back contingent (which was organized by the RSB) was the high point in a series of actions that have rocked New York State campuses in the past few weeks. Through these struggles more and more students are learning who it is that is responsible for the attacks coming down on people and how to fight them--and win.

Students in New York for the past year have witnesses the near collapse of New York City. They have seen the economic crisis hit sharply, have been forced to stand by with millions of other New Yorkers while Washington, Albany and municipal governments haggle over how many firehouses and hospitals should be closed and how many thousands of government workers should be fired.

Each "plan" to save the city and the state only leads to greater cutbacks with no end in sight. This has been true for higher education, with each month a new "plan" or proposal coming out for cutting back or raising fees. But every proposal has the same goal--to make the people give up more to help out the bankers and businessmen looking for more profit.

This is the background for the fight being built on the SUNY and CUNY campuses. At the SUNY the state is trying to raise tuition $100 and increase dorm fees by another $100. In New York City, the Kibbee plan which was just adopted by the Board of Higher Education would end Open Admissions (the policy where any high school grad can enter a city college, which was won by student struggle in 1969), close down four campuses and force thousands out of college.

The Albany demonstration, launched a statewide struggle that shook the NY state and city educational system to its roots. Before the blaze of anger from Albany had cooled, the ripples from that fight became waves at campuses across the state. Nineteen colleges with thousands of students participating, went out on strike, confronted administrators where they hid and seized and occupied buildings.

As a result of these struggles students are beginning to feel that they are engaged in an on-going fight over these attacks against the politicians and their friends who represent a different class, the lass of rich capitalists who run this country.

These cutbacks, like all the abuses people face in this country, are attacks by this class of the rich on the majority of people. What students across New York and the rest of the country have learned through their day-to-day battles is that the only way to stop them is to take things in their own hands, to organize and to confront the rich was mass struggle.

In New Jersey 6,000 students gathered in Trenton, the state capital to demand an end to attacks on the state education system. The students protested tuition increases, teacher layoffs, closed admission policies, and other cutbacks. They demanded that Governor Byrne come out and meet with them by chanting "We Want Byrne." Hen de didn't show the chant changed to "If Byrne won't come out, then we'll go in." They took over the capital steps and hundreds of students were met with armed state police and attack dogs.

In Chicago the Chicago City College Board raised tuition fees by 75%. The day after this vote 350 students, led by the Southwest Student government and the RSB marched across the campus to confront Oscar Shabat, Chancellor of the Board. A few days later 400 students from several campuses marched through downtown Chicago to the Board Office, City Hall and picketed the Civic Center. They refused to send a few delegates to meet with the Board. Instead the students demanded that the Board come out, chanting "All of us or none."

The nation-wide fight against tuition hikes, cutbacks and other attacks have brought students from other schools in Boston, Maryland, Georgia, Florida and others into the growing struggle and will continue to expand to schools--large and small across the country.

As veterans, we too are facing these same attacks from schools and the VA, brought on by the US ruling class, who seek to bleed us all--youth, students, vets, unemployed, and employed alike. Used in the crumby wars, thrown into the streets from the military, record numbers of vets from the Korean era to the Vietnam era are attending school. With these attacks on all students, attacks on the GI Bill and massive cutbacks, they're trying to put into the streets again.

We in VVAW, students or not, will stand shoulder to shoulder with RSB and other students in the face of these attacks. When push comes to shove, it won't be the students that are kicked out of schools, but the rich and their cops, bootlicking administrators, "sham" student leaders and trustees.

(Much of the information in this article came from Fight Back, the national paper of the RSB. For more information about the RSM or to subscribe to Fight Back, contact the RSB National Office, PO Box A3423, Chicago, IL 60690.)