Minneapolis, MN – Roughly 70 University of Minnesota students, faculty, staff and community members rallied together on May 11 outside McNamara Alumni Center, where the governing Board of Regents met to discuss finance and operations amidst brutal budget cuts and job-cutting measures.

The “Board of Regents: Chop from the Top! Rally” was organized by the Students, Staff and Faculty United coalition, including AFSCME 3800 clerical workers, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the UMN Graduate Labor Union – UE (GLU-UE), and the UMN chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

“We are in a pitched battle for the future direction of this public institution and really for higher education as a whole,” said AFSCME 3800 president, Cherrene Horazuk, “On the one side, we have the students, grad workers, staff and faculty who are committed to the mission of research, teaching and service. On the other side are the fat cat administrators and corporate interests who want to get rich off this public institution.”

In March of this year, the university requested an unprecedented $97.5 million in addition to the original request for $205 million. “It’s a money grab,” says Horazuk, commenting on the historic and increasing greed of the university and the noted surplus in the Minnesota legislature. When making these requests, the university threatened huge budget cuts and increased raises to student tuition. [See note 1 below]

In April, the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts informed departments of dire cuts to instructional budgets, the same budgets that pay contingent faculty and graduate students. Cuts would amount to roughly 11% across the board, with some departments seeing a criminal 50% cut. According to the Department of English Senior Lecturer Eric Daigre, a member of AAUP, 30% of the university’s resources were devoted to instruction in 2008, but that number has yet to rise above 23% since. With so little funding to liberal arts classes, instructors have become “the gig workers of academia,” according to Daigre. [2]

These cuts come after a landmark unionizing vote among graduate student workers, who must now negotiate their contract while struggling to pay their bills. Meanwhile 612 administrators at the U make more than Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Twenty administrators make even more than the president of the United States.

Referencing a conversation earlier this week between Provost Croson and the Council of Graduate Students, Cal Mergendahl, an organizer with the Graduate Labor Union, said, “We’re told that we should be grateful for the fact that we need to go into credit card debt to live off our stipends, that we should be grateful for having bosses that drive us to tears, that we should be grateful to be paying back two paychecks a year to our employer in student fees – this from someone who makes half a million dollars a year.”

In 2012, The Wall Street Journal ran a scathing article regarding bloated, high-paid administrations in the midst of skyrocketing tuition, which pointed out the U of M as a prime example. The Minnesota legislature demanded cutbacks on administrative costs, but rather than cut top salaries, the U hired Huron Consulting Group, a top-three corporate consulting firm that specializes in higher education.

Huron is now pushing a disastrous, corporatizing PEAK initiative, which promises to ensure a “human-centered approach to how services are delivered on campus” and prioritize an “equitable and inclusive employee experience.” In truth, PEAK plans to move frontline clerical jobs out of the colleges and into soul-crushing centralized positions, away from coworkers into jobs with singular, paper-pushing functions. While they claim the intention is not to create layoffs, it is unlikely jobs won’t be lost amidst the confusion and lack of leadership. [3]

In response to this initiative, a central slogan of the rally was “Pause on PEAK! Not one job lost!” Other demands included “Chop from the top!” “Cut admin, not classes,” and “Tell the Board of Regents to fully fund CLA – not their own pockets!” referencing towering upper administrative salaries. “This isn’t a budget crisis,” said Eric Daigre, “It’s a distribution crisis!”

Students for a Democratic Society added, “Defend Ethnic and Gender Studies!” following earlier, leaked plans for cuts as large as 50% to American Indian Studies, 30% to Chicano and Latino Studies, 27.5% to African and African American Studies, 10% to Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, among others. “These cuts were only backtracked after SDS led an action demanding these programs be fully funded,” said SDS member, Gillian Rath. “Even now, they still intend to make cuts and we need to keep up the pressure.”

Audrianna Goodwin of the TRUTH Project pointed out the university was unwilling to provide funding. The TRUTH Project, which stands for Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing, recently released their final report, titled Oshkigin Noojimo'iwe, Naġi Waƞ P̣etu Uƞ Ihduwaṡ'ake He Oyate Kiƞ Zaniwic̣aye Kte, which details the systemic exploitation and oppression of indigenous peoples by the University of Minnesota. The report offers clear steps for the university to restore that relationship, and yet the University of Minnesota leadership has yet to make any public comment on the report.

After the rally, Students for a Democratic Society led a disruption of the Board of Regents meeting to demand protections for academic programs like American Indian Studies. “It is disgusting and shameful that the university is trying to save money in the budget by attacking the vital, important, and hard-won programs,” said Gillian Rath after standing up during the Board of Regents meeting.

In response, disruptors were threatened with arrest and followed out of the building. This indicates a nationwide trend toward increased policing and repression of protesters in response to cuts to academic programs, in particular ethnic studies and DEI programs, as notably seen with the arrest of the Tampa 5 at the University of South Florida. To fight this, organizers highlighted the need for the university campus to stand together to win the fight against austerity and the further corporatization of the U.

[1] Maia Irvin. “UMN Requests $205M from State.” The Minnesota Daily, February 2, 2023.

[2] “Statement on CLA Instructional Cuts.” April 25, 2023.

[3] Douglas Belkin and Scott Thurm. “Cost of College: Colleges’ Bureaucracy Expands Costs.” The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2012.

#MinneapolisMN #ChopFromTheTop

Chicago, IL – 1100 faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) went on strike, Feb. 18, to demand a fair contract. Several rallies drew 500 strikers and their supporters to the middle of campus.

These members of Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) Local 6456 showed a high degree of solidarity. Issues in the strike include a wage increase for the entire bargaining unit, but also a minimum salary for the non-tenured full-time lecturers – teachers with PhDs currently earning only $30,000 a year. IFT Local 6456 is demanding a $45,000 minimum for them.

The union points to the wrong priorities in place at the university, where tuition has risen 25% since 2007 and where the school has over $1 billion in reserves, but where faculty are not paid what they are worth. Most professors have gone two years without raises. Three years ago, their pay was docked through the use of furlough days.

IFT leaders blame the Board of Trustees and University President Bob Easter. Joe Persky, president of UIC United Faculty, said in a statement, “The administration’s priorities don’t match the University’s mission, and after trying to negotiate a fair contract for eighteen months, they’ve left us no choice but to strike.”

UIC looks more and more like a corporation each year. The IFT notes that the number of administrators has increased by 10%, while tenured faculty positions have decreased by 1% in recent years. In response to this, one of the chants heard from picketers has been, “Chop from the top!”

#ChicagoIL #ChopFromTheTop #UniversityOfIllinoisChicago #tuitionHikes #teachersStrike #workersRights #IFTLocal6456

Minneapolis, MN – Members of AFSCME Local 3800, clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, filled the room here, June 5, testifying at a Board of Regents’ public forum on the university budget. The clerical workers spoke about how they have been impacted by administrative bloat and tuition hikes. Some of the 25 workers laid off last week attended the hearing.

Cherrene Horazuk, President of AFSCME Local 3800, told the regents, “Create a truly world class university that pays all workers a livable wage, not a poverty wage for many and luxury wages for a few. A university that recognizes and respects the work that is done and the people that do it. A university that can’t be called the university of haves and have nots. It’s long past time to chop from the top.”

In her testimony, Melanie Steinman, chief steward of AFSCME Local 3800, condemned the recent layoffs at the U of M.

Chris Getowicz of Students for a Democratic Society also testified, saying “Students overwhelmingly voted for our referendum last semester calling for increased budget transparency, student voice in tuition and fee decision, and a 10% salary cut for the 167 administrators making over $200,000. My tuition dollars should go towards education, not administration.”

#MinneapolisMN #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #BudgetCuts #UniversityOfMinnesota #AFSCME3800 #ChopFromTheTop

Milwaukee, WI – Students for a Democratic Society’s call for a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education was answered by the Education Rights Coalition, Milwaukee SDS, undergraduate and graduate students, union members and community members who rallied on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, March 14.

At present the U.S. government spends about $128 billion on education, a meager amount compared to the $851 billion military budget. Additionally, student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion, more than the U.S.’s level of credit card debt.

Rallying in Spaights Plaza (during midterm examination week), students held signs like “Chop from the top!” and “Education is a right!” and a large banner that read “Fund education not occupation!”

Tiffany Strong from SDS, Jorge Maya from Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES), and Gilbert Johnson, Vice President of AFSCME 82, gave personal testimony to the rising cost of education and its unaffordability, especially for disabled, undocumented, poor and oppressed nationality students.

Gerardo Alvarado, an organizer from Youth Empowered in the Struggle, said, “Until scholarships are available for undocumented people the rates for immigrant students attending college will be low.”

After rallying in Spaights Plaza, the demonstrators marched to present their list of demands to Chancellor Michael Lovell and Vice Chancellor Michael Laliberte at Chapman Hall.

Reminiscent of a protest a couple years back when 15 students were arrested in a standoff with UWM police outside Chapman Hall, the coalition members were met once again with a locked building guarded by university police. A sign on the north entrance read “No admittance! Use east entrance!” When asked if they could enter as a group a police officer replied “not today!” as he let in individual staff members.

Protesters refused to leave until an administrator met with them and received their demands. They then were greeted by another officer and Dean of Students Jim Hill, who asked for a representative and who claimed they did not know where the chancellor and vice chancellor were. Hill insisted he would present the demands to the chancellors himself. After stating the demands of the protest in a mic-check outside Chapman Hall, the coalition members marched back to Spaights Plaza where they held several more mic-checks in and around the student union, again announcing their demands.

The Education Rights Coalition presented the following demands: that all student loans be forgiven; chop military spending and more money for Pell grants; Increased availability of scholarships for disabled, undocumented, poor and oppressed nationality students; and increased availability of funds for state employees.

#MilwaukeeWI #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #EducationRights #ChopFromTheTop #EducationRightsCoalition

Minneapolis, MN – About 40 students and campus workers rallied at Morrill Hall and marched through the University of Minnesota (U of M) campus on March 14 to protest rising tuition costs and the university’s top-heavy administration. The protest was part of a national day of action for education rights.

The U of M administration has come under fire recently for having too many highly-paid top level administrators and too few front line workers and fo