On Wednesday, Oct. 14th, Temple Students and staff gathered outside of the 24-hour section at Charles Library. Just 500 feet away is Sullivan Hall, where Temple’s Board of Trustees was holding a meeting. Halfway through, the meeting was allegedly moved to the Liacouras Center.
A flyer for the protest said the rally attendees “demand[ed] staffing, transparency, and accountability.” This comes after the school laid off 40 employees this year because of a deficit, but an increase in spending in other sectors like University Police and raising tuition rates.
A member of Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP) was asked to share why their organization showed up on this day. TAUP is a union for faculty at Temple University. They describe themselves as “thousands of academic workers, united to pursue equity, respect, dignity, and job security.”
“As a faculty member here at Temple, I am here today because in the face of these budget cuts, an inordinate amount of burden has been placed on the faculty and students shoulder these cuts,” the TAUP member told Her Campus. “There has been very little transparency about what the central administration is doing on their end in addressing these budget cuts.”
They went on to say that they “don’t think that’s fair. What I’d like to see is more transparency and clear messaging about what central administration is doing to address these budget issues.”
A member of Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA), an international organization built on “establish[ing] a workers’ government[,]” told Her Campus that their organization came out to the rally because “being a Communist party [and] being based in workers politics, it is important that [RCA] show up for any movement that has a genuine basis in workers fighting for their own struggle.”
RCA is a Marxist organization. They follow the internationalist theory of Leon Trotsky, a Russian revolutionary. In following these principles, they came out to this demonstration to fight for Temple worker and Temple student rights.
They went on to explain “that these movements have the grounds to expand into a broader struggle… against the system of capitalism” which they say is “the root cause for these symptoms” that were being protested.
They think that “for a lot of students today, the question isn’t are things bad; but it is what we can do about this?” They believe their organization offers a solution through their “Marxist scientific study of the world.”
A member of Temple Action Solidarity Coalition (TASC), an organization that advocates for oppressed people in Philadelphia, the US, and globally, told Her Campus that they showed up because they “believe that the students at any university [to] hold the administration accountable. The university should be running in the interest of the students, and not billionaires that aren’t elected Democratically.”
By “elected democratically,” they mean that the Temple community does not get to elect the Board of Trustees. They are elected by already standing members.
A member of the Temple University chapter of Youth Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the youth extension of the American Political party which holds the same values, told Her Campus that their objective is to “organize the undergraduate student body.”
They went on to say that “the students are very upset. You hear a lot of ‘We don’t like John Fry’ and ‘we don’t like the Board of Trustees, but there’s not a lot of action. We want to get the community involved. We want to join the organizing and unionizing of this campus, and get the undergraduates involved in it. [We would like to join] the array of activism and start making a real change on this campus.”
Temple is an educational institution, not a business. For those who were out here on this day, they think that it’s unfair for students to not know where their tuition money is going and unfair that staff have to carry so much of the weight from these budget cuts that have yet to be disclosed where the cut funds are going.