Rally protests state of education

Protesters wound around campus shouting, banging drums and blocking traffic Tuesday afternoon in a noise demonstration against the privatization of public education.

Originally announced as activism against Gov. Mitch Daniels’ appointment as president of Purdue University, demonstrators spoke in solidarity with a Chicago Teachers Union strike and against increasing student tuition in the IU system and student loan debt.

“Everyone knows they’re personally in debt, but no one talks about it,” said senior Aidan Crane, one of the more outspoken voices during the protest and a former Indiana Daily Student opinion columnist. “We need to force everybody, shock them out of complacency.”

The march took protestors from the clock outside Woodburn Hall to the Sample Gates and back to Woodburn, traveling down Indiana Avenue and Seventh Street.

Though the demonstrators shouted and made loud noise with instruments as they marched, the protest remained nonviolent until one participant smashed a drum into a car window.

While walking down North Forrest Avenue between Woodburn and the Indiana Memorial Union parking lot, a man collided with a black Jeep Wrangler that had stopped due to the protest.

The protestor hit his drum against the side of the car and on the rear passenger-side window, breaking part of it, the car’s owner senior Ethan Spiers said.

The glass from the broken window cut senior Daniel Block’s shoulder. He was sitting in the back seat.

IU police on the scene looked through a backpack Spiers said the man who hit his window dropped before running away.

Block’s injuries were patched up at the scene, and no hospital visit was required.
Before police and ambulances necessitated an end to the march, protesters played instruments and chanted.

“Fuck debt,” the protestors said repeatedly.

Before leaving the Woodburn clock area, statements were read in support of Chicago teachers and a group of Purdue students and faculty opposed to Daniels taking charge of Purdue.

“People at Purdue and across Indiana committed to academic excellence, public integrity and social equality should demand that the Purdue Board of Trustees rethink their decision,” Crane read from a statement written by Purdue professors Tithi Bhattacharya and Bill Mullen.

The assembled crowd of about 30 people responded with cheers, calling Daniels “corrupt” for being appointed by a board that includes eight members he appointed.

The crowd said Daniels’ political beliefs about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights were “bullshit” and out of touch with the Purdue community.

Ben Robinson, an IU professor of Germanic studies, read a statement on behalf of the Progressive Faculty and Staff Caucus in solidarity with Chicago teachers, who are on a strike that the Chicago Tribune reported is keeping 350,000 children from going to school.

“The struggle is important because it’s very tied to what Mitch Daniels is trying to do,” Robinson said. “We learn and we become a public by educating ourselves.”

Along with Robinson, other faculty members marched in the back of the group, which largely consisted of students, banging on their pots and pans.

“What we endorsed was a resolution concerning the strikers,” Robinson said. “Our concern was to oppose the privatization of education.”

When the group started to walk, Crane said into a megaphone, “When education is under attack, what do we do?”

“Stand up, fight back,” the group responded.

The protest included people without direct connections to IU. Gina Weir, a Bloomington resident and mother of a fourth-grade child came to the march.

“I know first-hand as a mother how bad education is moving for our kids,” she said.
Weir said the state Department of Education told her that her son could no longer attend public schools after she refused for him to take a state-mandated standardized test administered to third graders last year.

“I got to the end of my rope,” Weir said.

One of the protest’s central themes was that tuition shouldn’t rise while administrators and the Board of Trustees receive pay raises.

Tuition increased 3.7 percent for in-state students this year. At the same time, IU President Michael McRobbie’s salary rose 2.2 percent. The University’s trustees do not take a salary.

During the march, bystanders stared and took pictures on their camera phones as the demonstrators chanted statements like “Cream and crimson, occupy everything” and “The students united will never be defeated.”

Drivers angry at protestors for taking up the entire width of Seventh Street honked their horns, and interested students poked their heads out of Ballantine Hall’s windows.

Generating public attention and creating a spectacle were among the primary goals of the noise demonstration, Crane said.

“There can be momentary victories combined with long-term action,” he said. “If somebody saw this or heard about it and is sympathetic, the thing to do is to join us.”