Wind out of protesters’ sails

There is a large grassy area in the middle of UNLV's campus called the Academic Mall.

To fill that space with people, you would need in excess of 2,000 bodies packed closely together.

Such a crowd gathered there in January, when student leaders from Southern Nevada's higher education institutions sponsored a rally to protest state budget cuts.

Estimates for the crowd ranged from 2,000 to more than 5,000, depending on who did the estimating. Either way, it was massive and unexpected and virtually unprecedented.

The large turnout energized the students, the state's higher education leadership and legislators who oppose the proposed cuts.

And then Thursday night happened.

It was another rally, on the same Academic Mall, with similar speeches given by the same student leaders.

But the crowd? Sparse. Small. Modest. A few hundred at most.

Maybe it was the wind, which made being outside unpleasant. Maybe it was the NCAA basketball tournament on television.

Maybe it was the return of apathy, a been-there, done-that attitude.

"I didn't hear all the hype that I did for the last one," said University of Nevada, Las Vegas student Alee Cookingham, 22, a junior accounting major.

She and her twin sister, Bree, also a 22-year-old junior accounting major, were signing form letters to legislators protesting the cuts.

The letters were the whole point of the rally, as the Legislature is meeting right now to talk about the budget for the next two years.

Gov. Jim Gibbons, seeing a severe downturn in projected state revenues, has proposed cutting the university system's budget by 36 percent.

Higher education leaders say such a cut would devastate the system, resulting in 2,200 layoffs, thousands of students left without classes to take and the certain closing of some programs.

The Cookingham twins attended the January rally and said they saw this one as just as important.

"You should attend all of them," Bree said.

For those who were there Thursday night, a familiar theme emerged.

"Don't kill my dreams, degrees or university," read one sign held up by a student.

UNLV's student body president, Adam Cronis, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the university could avoid cuts as deep as those proposed by Gibbons.

"We're in a better spot than we were two months ago," Cronis said. "But we've got a long way to go still."

He said the students are trying to organize a bus trip to Carson City for a legislative hearing next month.

Cronis kicked off the rally on stage a while later, where he talked about another upcoming legislative hearing.

David Waterhouse, the student body president at the College of Southern Nevada, threw a few numbers out to the crowd:

• $475 million, the total cut proposed by Gibbons.

"Booooo," said the crowd.

• 200 percent, the estimated tuition increase that would be required to avoid layoffs and program cuts.

"Booooo," said the crowd.

• 2,200, the estimated number of faculty layoffs that would happen if the cut went through.

"Booooo," said the crowd.

Waterhouse wondered what all the students would do if their college or university were so devastated.

"Where are we going to go? Out of state? McDonald's."

He paused.

"Hopefully, not McDonald's."

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.