Boston University club organizers and students will converge on Marsh Plaza today at 2 p.m. to rally for student issues they say are being ignored by the BU administration.
The Student Day of Action will try to gain support for the fight of perceived student problems including the use of the undergraduate student fee, the lack of funding for student government, struggles with Teaching Fellows, the non-discrimination clause and President Jon Westling’s denial of the request for cable television on campus.
The rally will feature speeches at Marsh Plaza followed by a march to Westling’s Bay State Road office where they hope to make their voices heard by protesting outside.
Jen Sutherland, Student Union Executive Board president and a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said the Student Day of Action will serve several purposes.
“The event will try to raise the level of awareness about some of the issues students have problems with, such as the TA/TF issue, the sexual discrimination clause and other things,” she said.
Goals for the day vary between activist organizers. One of the head coordinators, CAS senior Jamie Weiss, said he hopes the day alerts the administration to ongoing problems.
“The Day of Action is a way for all of us who have been working on issues at BU to come together to speak out against the administration ignoring the demands of the students,” Weiss said.
Dan Feder, the Vice President of Public Relations for the Student Union and a junior in the University Professors Program, said one of the main ideas of the Student Day of Action is to inform the students.
“If we can get a lot of students to realize that there are also a lot of things that need to be worked on, maybe we can find a better way to work toward a resolution,” Feder said.
Union Vice President of Safety Services Patrick Donovan said the day is for the students.
“In my mind, the day of action is to give a forum to all the students at BU to just use their voice,” said Donovan, a School of Education senior. “Too often people are unhappy about something and they don’t tell someone about it.”
Donovan said he will be fighting for the improvement of the rape crisis services BU provides. BU has several services, he said, but “the main problem with these services is that no one knows that they exist.”
Donovan also cited several other issues as reasons why BU needs to increase their rape crisis counseling.
“There are some gaps in terms of emergency counseling,” Donovan said. “We have the counseling center, but it is not on a 24-hour emergency basis; we have a counselor who is good, but when you call after business hours, you get put through to the police department.”
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