As the noon hour approached on Monday, small factions of West Virginia University students and faculty could be seen surrounding the area in front of the Mountainlair, preparing for an organized student walk-out in response to proposed program and faculty cuts at the university. Many students dressed in red in support of the faculty and programs on the chopping block.
“Red for Ed,” explained walk-out co-organizer Christian Adams, a Chinese Studies major.
As the walk-out time approached, each small group, carrying signs regarding their respective programs, began to move in toward the campus free speech zone where walk-out organizers were stationed. On the Evansdale campus, students gathered on the recreation fields near the Towers dormitory.
“Katherine Johnson (WVU Math Alum) is rolling in her grave – Keep math grad programs,” one sign read, referring to the famous NASA calculator from West Virginia whose essential mathematics contributed to the first American flight into space and the Apollo 11 mission.
“Donde las dan las toman,” another sign said in Spanish. Roughly translated, it means, “What goes around comes around.” This was just one of dozens of signs being waved in support of the jeopardized world languages programs.
It was clear who students held responsible for the cuts with many taking shots directly at WVU administration with signs like- “Gee + Reed = Greed” and “Stop the Gee-llotine.”
As 12 p.m. hit, walk-out organizers with the newly formed West Virginia United, a union of students officially affiliated with the West Virginia Campus Workers, began a series of chants as the crowd began to grow larger and larger, eventually filling the area with hundreds of chanting students.
Their message was clear. “Stop the cuts!”
The students called for WVU President E. Gordon Gee to be fired chanting in a call and response fashion – “What do we say to Gordon Gee? Tell that man we’ll kick him to the street.”
They also aimed to make sure they were heard by Dean of Students Corey Farris, who last week made statements claiming students didn’t have much to say about the proposed program cuts.
“Here we are! Here we are, Corey Farris!” organizers screamed through their megaphones.
Adams proclaimed to the crowd that the WVU administration has “misled parents, teachers, students, and the press.
“Just a few days ago Corey Farris went on MetroNews claiming students did not care about the budget cuts,” Adams said. “But this many people being here today proves him very wrong. It shows that students do care and that we are tuned in.
“We will always be underestimated, and we will always use that to our advantage,” he said.
Adams and West Virginia United cofounder and mathematics major Matthew Kolb told The Dominion Post they began the organization at the end of the 2023 semester after finding out several programs were under review and being threatened and no one really knew about it.
Since then, they have done a lot of research into the proposed cuts, as well as the administration and are prepared to fight to keep the programs alive.
At the rally, The Dominion Post spoke with puppetry major Ziah Madsen, who was upset WVU was not upfront about the program’s instability and had concerns about the future of the puppetry art form should WVU discontinue its current program.
“I’m really upset. I chose WVU because of its Puppetry BFA,” Madsen said. “It’s one of only two schools in the country that provides that program and they didn’t tell me about the proposed cuts until I was already here, and I am from Colorado, so I am very far from home.”
Madsen said the alternative choice for puppetry, the University of Connecticut (UCONN), may be unaffordable for some and having only one program in the country would make it more difficult to get in.
Madsen said she believes the proposed cuts will hurt students whose programs are not being threatened more than those students realize.
“These budgetary cuts to educational programs affect all students a lot because it is jeopardizing WVU’s standing as an R1 research institution,” she said, “which will devalue everyone’s majors, especially with the foreign language cuts.”
Students and faculty were not the only ones who came to show they don’t like the proposed cuts.
Former West Virginia Delegate Barbara Fleischauer came to show her support for the students and faculty as well as Monongalia County Delegates Evan Hansen and Anitra Hamilton, who told students they attempted to get a bill passed for additional funding for WVU, but it was ultimately shot down.
Local residents and business owners were also at the rally to voice their concerns for the greater Morgantown community and the effects a drop in student enrollment might have on the business and housing market as well as the faculty who will be losing their jobs.
Resident and business owner James Guiliani said he was “offended by the cuts being made by Gordon Gee,” but “I’m appalled now that he’s going to take from my community, my town, my city, my university.”
After about an hour of chanting and speeches from students and faculty alike, the students moved their protest from the free speech zone to the doorway of Stewart Hall, where WVU administration offices, including Gee’s, are located.
The rally remained peaceful throughout as students called for Gee’s immediate resignation and pay cuts for other administrators and the highest paid staff, such as football coach Neal Brown, instead of cutting educational programs.
Student organizers encouraged the crowd not to stop with this walk-out and asked them to attend any and all Board of Governor’s meetings until their vote in September. They also plan to be there and fill the lawn of the Erickson Alumni Center on Sept. 15, the day the board is scheduled to vote on the proposed cuts.
“I want to tell you all that this is just the beginning,” Adams yelled to the crowd. “We will continue to ramp up and send shockwaves not only across campus and West Virginia, but across the country.
“For our whole lives we have been told we are the future,” he said. “Today is the day we step up and be the present.”
The Dominion Post reached out to the university for comment and was provided this statement:
“While we encourage students to be in class, we also support those who chose to engage in respectful debate on our campus which is their First Amendment right. We have been listening to students who have been telling us what they want through the majors and programs they are enrolling in, and importantly those they are not, and we are responding. That data factors heavily into preliminary recommendations, and it is why we focused on areas that would affect the fewest possible number of students – less than 2%.”
