NEWS Page 3
VOICES Page 5
Student participates
in New York
Fashion Week
Black History Month
is more than MLK
Page 6
BLACK HISTORY Page 4
Thursday, February 25, 2016
VOL. 87, No. 20
Students gather, rally at Capitol
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
College students worried
their campuses could close
their doors mid-semester
swarmed the Louisiana Capitol steps Wednesday to protest
the threat of deep budget reductions, chanting “No more
cuts!”
Crystal Harris showed up in
a full cap and gown, bearing a
sign that said “Can I graduate
please?”
The 41-year-old English
major at Southern University
at New Orleans said she was
hoping to graduate this semester but worried state funding
cuts could disrupt those plans.
“I’m in my cap and gown
because this might be the only
opportunity I might get to
wear it if the legislators don’t
do something,” Harris said on
the Capitol steps.
Higher education leaders estimated 2,000 students
attended the rally on a brisk
and windy day where they
struggled to hold signs saying
“Louisiana Needs More College Graduates” and “S.O.S:
Save Our Schools.”
The Southern University
marching band also performed
at the protest.
“Policymakers, I implore
you to do what is right,” said
Danyelle Parrish, student government president of River
Parishes Community College.
“I need to know that I will be
allowed to finish my nursing
program that I worked so hard
to get to.”
The state’s four public college system presidents urged
students to reach out to lawmakers and pressure them to
protect campuses from slashing.
“You are not a cut. You are
an investment by the state of
Louisiana,” Louisiana Community and Technical College
System President Monty Sullivan said to cheers.
Gov. John Bel Edwards
spoke at the rally, saying he was
working to shield the schools.
The Democratic governor
is asking lawmakers gathered
in a special session to raise
taxes to help close deep gaps
in the budgets for this year
and next.
Some Republicans have
shown resistance to taxes and
are pushing for deeper cuts,
and they’ve objected to talk of
campus shutdowns, threats of
a canceled LSU football season and steep reductions to
the state’s TOPS free college
tuition programs.
But higher education officials say those possibilities are
real, not scare tactics.
Without tax hikes, the Edwards administration says colleges could be hit with more
than $200 million in cuts over
the next four months.
Commissioner of Higher
Education Joe Rallo said if
that worst-case scenario happens, many campuses likely
will suspend operations and
cancel classes.
Even if lawmakers agree
to Edwards’ proposed tax increases, public colleges could
still face cuts of at least $70
million before June 30.
Nearly a dozen lawmakers,
both Republican and Democrat, attended the protest and
pledged their support for higher education.
Courtesy photo
Grambling State students disembark from the buses that took them to Baton Rouge for
Wednesday’s rally. They were among an estimated 2,000 students statewide who took part.
State financial crisis impacts students
KYREA BOOKER
The Gramblinite
With all the politics and
hearsay floating around many
individuals have lost sight of
who is truly being affected by
the higher education budget
cuts.
Since 2014, Grambling
State University has seen how
detrimental budget cuts can be.
The School of Nursing
had struggled to say afloat for
some time now and in summer
2015 it was officially closed.
Due to an overflow of students who did not meet state
examination
requirements
GSU’s school of nursing lost
its accreditation.
To that end, a multitudinous amount of students had
to either switch their majors or
transfer to schools like Northwestern State University,
Camika Price and Cameron
Sanders, both junior nursing majors from Shreveport,
Louisiana were among these
students.
“I’m sad every time I think
about how I ended up at a predominantly white institution. I
was a semester away from clinicals before I transferred from
GSU and I would have rather
GRAPHACTS
Knowledge Of Self
While Black History Month comes to a close in
2016, let’s use the rest of the year to truly find
out who we are in American society with a few
classic books from authors and scholars of black history and thought.
Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington, Published 1901
Up from Slavery is the autobiography of Booker T. Washington’s
personal experiences to rise from the position of a slave child during
the Civil War, to the getting an education at Hampton University. His
work with vocational schools, like Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute
helped black people and other minorities learn useful skills and work.
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. DuBois, Published 1903
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of seminal work in the
history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary
history. It contains several essays on race, some of which the
magazine Atlantic Monthly had previously published. To develop this
work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American
in the American society.
The Mis-Education of The Negro
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Published 1933
The Mis-Education of the Negro is Dr. Woodson’s thesis on how
African Americans of his day were being culturally indoctrinated,
rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims,
causes African Americans to become dependent and to seek out
inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He
challenges his readers to "do for themselves", regardless of what
they were taught.
Native Son
Richard Wright, Published 1940
Native Son is a novel that tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger
Thomas, an African American youth living in utter poverty on
Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. Whil