Students Invoke King's Name at Budget Cut Protest Series: UDC: FAILING GRADES Series Number: 2/2
Students, faculty members and alumni of the University of the District of Columbia rallied yesterday to denounce cuts planned by UDC's new acting president to close a $16.2 million budget deficit, and they challenged the city's political leaders to find more money to save the beleaguered school.</br></br>Marching several miles from the UDC campus on upper Connecticut Avenue to the White House and then to the downtown Martin Luther King Memorial Library, UDC supporters said that their fight to save the school was in the tradition of King's civil rights struggle and that they would not let King's dream -- or their school -- die.</br></br>"Dr. King is looking down on us, and he is smiling today," said Jack Johnson, head of the Graduate Student Government Association, who called on students to fight together to heighten public awareness of how important the school is to thousands of D.C. residents.</br></br>The march and rally on King's birthday, which drew more than 150 people, were planned as the school faces the most severe crisis in its 20-year history. City appropriations have been cut more than 50 percent since 1991, and the university was put on warning by its accrediting agency last summer.</br></br>Acting President Julius F. Nimmons Jr. has proposed eliminating the deficit by firing 125 faculty and 130 non-faculty employees and imposing furloughs of six to nine days. The faculty reduction plan calls for the heaviest cuts in the English and Mathematics departments, where 80 percent of the courses are remedial.