Fall 2008
Protesting 2.0
Students rally against budget cuts through social networking site
Story by Erin O'Donnell
Photo by Aaron Mayes
When a favorite professor lost her job, Hepi Mita knew he had to act. Professor Charlotte-Anne Lucas had taught him about online reporting and Web publishing — subjects critical to journalism majors like Mita — so he took Lucas' lessons to heart and took his protest to Facebook.
He spent all of 10 minutes setting up a group on the social networking website. Within a week, more than 1,000 people had joined "The Nevada Higher Education Budget Cuts are Threatening my Future" Facebook group.
Part-time faculty members like Lucas were among the first to go when the state's agencies were told to cut their budgets. UNLV had to trim $18.1 million from its budget and faces drastic cuts for the 2009-2011 fiscal years. "I didn't know what (that amount) meant, but I knew one of my favorite professors just got fired because of it," says Mita, a senior from New Zealand.
Membership grew exponentially because of the way Facebook members can post messages to hundreds of friends in a nanosecond. Students like Gregan Wingert discussed the cuts on their personal Facebook pages, then urged friends to spread the word. Every time someone joins a group, their friends receive a notice. "And you start to wonder, 'Why have 10 of my friends joined this group?'" Wingert says.
Students, faculty, and staff from UNR and the College of Southern Nevada have joined the group as well. "I was very surprised that it reached those networks," Mita says. "I had invited all my friends from UNLV, and then it leapfrogged all around."
The group's page acts like an information hub. Members post links to news and related websites, relay details about public meetings, and provide contacts for legislators and university administrators. Ultimately, Mita's goal is to turn back the cuts, but "I'm not a fool. I know the state is in bad shape economically…but to me, 14 percent is just ridiculous."
As students returned for the fall semester, Mita and Wingert were expecting a surge in membership and planning real-world activities like simultaneous protests at Nevada campuses. "One of the goals is to make a lot of noise," Wingert says. "A thousand people who pay taxes and vote speak much more loudly than one sophomore journalism major."
