Protests erupt over U of M budget cuts

By Abdi Mohamed

Contributing

Writer

hop from the top!

That’s the message that University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff have been chanting at recent protests against the university’s 2023-24 budget cuts and current administrative changes.

In late April, students rallied outside McNamara Alumni Center after word spread about the university’s plan to significantly cut the budgets of the ethnic and gender studies programs.

According to a statement released by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the university planned to cut 50 percent of American Indian studies, 30 percent of Chicano and Latino studies, 27.5 percent of African American studies, and 10 percent of Gender, Women, and Sexuality studies programs.

The student-led group, along with other unions tied to the university, demanded that these programs be fully funded and that any necessary financial changes should first be taken out of the “bloated” administration.

Siobhan Moore is a member of Students for a Democratic Society, a national studentled organization with a history dating back to the 1960s, where students fought for racial equality and protested the Vietnam War. As a prospective transfer student to the U of M, Moore doesn’t want to see these programs cut before she gets a chance to enroll.

“We think it’s fundamentally wrong that such a bloated, overpaid university administration is able to off-load these budget cuts onto the backs of students, staff and faculty at the university and say that we have to, well, tighten their belts while they’re raking in six, seven-figure salaries annu- ally. President Gabel is getting a $200,000 sendoff bonus,” Moore said.

Former University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel resigned from her role following criticism of her joining the board of directors at Securian Financial. Several critics called for an investigation into Gabel’s relationship with Securian, since the financial service company had several ties to the university that accounted for more than a billion dollars.

The controversy only underlined concerns by UMN students and staff as Gabel’s base pay started at $706,000, with performance pay and retirement contributions. The proposed budget cuts coming soon after the news of the university president’s conflict of interest was enough to draw more scrutiny.

In the past year there’s been an uptick of union activity at the university. In the spring, graduate student workers at the UMN voted to form a union, after a 2,487-70 vote. They voted to unionize to secure workers’ rights and higher pay.

As it stands, the minimum pay for a graduate student worker at the UMN is $16,000, with a maximum stipend of $25,000. That’s compared to a cost of living for Hennepin

County of $37,025.

Sumanth Gopinath, an associate professor of music theory, was also present at the April protest along with other UMN faculty. Gopinath was elected president of the U of M’s campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization founded in 1915 with the aim of advancing academic freedom and helping shape the standards for higher education.

Gopinath has seen his organization take on more issues since the onset of the pandemic, as they advocated for more safety and protections for faculty and staff at the university when there was an effort to return ■ See U of M on page 5