College students to Gov. Bevin: "Cut the Bull, Not the Budget"

This from the State Journal:

 Flurries fell along Capital Avenue Thursday as dozens of Kentucky State University students joined more than a hundred others from colleges across the Commonwealth to protest Gov. Matt Bevin’s proposed cuts to higher education.

College students protest Gov. Matt Bevin’s proposed cuts to higher education

“Cut the bull, not the budget,” they yelled as they marched to the Capitol where lawmakers were convening for session.

Their signs hammered home their overriding point.

“My education is not for $ale.”

“Why are you making us fight for our right to learn?”

“No one agrees with you Matt Bevin!”

“I’m marching because I love my school and I don’t want it to close,” Jordan Wells, a junior at KSU told The State Journal as she chanted with others to grab the attention of lawmakers.

According to KSU President Raymond Burse, the governor’s proposed 9 percent cuts over the next two years could be crippling to the university as it restructures. But Burse maintains that shuttering the school is not an option — and never has been.

Gov. Bevin also wants to tie nearly a third of KSU’s state funding to its graduation rates and other performance-based metrics. Other public universities in the state face the same fate, although many of those schools are in better shape to absorb the budget blows.

Burse and Bevin meeting

On Wednesday, Gov. Bevin and State Budget Director John Chilton met on the KSU campus with Burse and several university stakeholders, including its Board of Regents Chair Karen Bearden and Student Government Association president Diamond Gordon. Bearden declined to comment about the meeting and Gordon didn’t immediately respond to requests from The State Journal for comments. But representatives from both the governor’s office and university say the meeting was mostly social in nature.

A Bevin spokesperson told The State Journal earlier that the governor plans to meet with all of the state’s university presidents to discuss the impacts of his budget ahead of any final vote in the General Assembly.

Still, Rep. Sannie Overly, D-Paris, says students have every reason to be extremely concerned about impending cuts to higher education.

“The university presidents have made it clear that the governor’s cuts will be crippling to our universities, and end up putting higher education further out of reach for many hardworking Kentuckians,” Overly said.

Shayla Boone, a freshman legacy at KSU whose mother and aunts also attended there, agrees.

“Now with me being at the school, I see the rising problems we’re having,” she said, as she rallied at the steps of the Capitol Annex Thursday holding a sign that compared in-state college tuition rates from 1970 to 2016.

The average cost for in-state tuition at Kentucky colleges has increased at a percentage rate nearly double that of minimum wage over the past four decades.