Hunger strike ends with rally
By Dan O'Brien, Collegian Staff
April 16, 2004
A group of international students held a rally to protest the University of Massachusetts' new international student fee, halting the majority of pedestrian traffic into Whitmore Administration Building yesterday.
The rally was part of an end to the Graduate Employee Organization's 48-hour hunger strike against the $65 fee.
The majority of the comments from speakers gave the same message: most of the protestors claim their opposition to the fee is not about the cost, but the principle of placing a fee on certain students and not others, solely due to their nationality.
Anil Duman, a member of GEO, said that if one particular group is singled out, then she fears that in the future, other groups may be singled out on campus as well.
"Now its affecting one group, but who's to say that it won't affect women, and other minorities later on? We think this is a discriminatory act that could affect all other groups on campus later," Duman said.
Another GEO member, Alejandro Reuss, also said that the reason students are protesting is not just about their own self interests.
"[It is] much easier to let someone else camp out in the rain, disrupt their lives, and organize a protest," Reuss said.
The crowd showed contempt toward the last speaker of the rally, Christina Sosa, who works for the Registrar for the Education Abroad program. Sosa took the microphone trying to disprove comments made by a particular speaker. Her comments sparked negative reaction from the crowd, who yelled comments at her as she spoke.
"This fee has nothing to do with surveillance," Sosa said. "I've worked in this office since 1986 and we've always kept files on international students."
After making this comment her microphone was abruptly pulled away. The protestor who pulled the microphone then spoke, calling for his fellow protestors to march to Chancellor John V. Lombardi's office inside Whitmore.
The protestors began yelling, "We won't pay!" as the crowd of approximately 250 marched into the building.
The crowd made their way outside Lombardi's office, but he was reportedly not in the building. After a few minutes, the crowd marched to Provost Christina Seymour's office. Seymour was also reportedly unavailable.
Many protestors said their main concern with the fee is that it will be used to cover costs to pay for surveillance of international students. That surveillance is part of the fee that covers compliance with the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, a requirement of the Patriot Act put in place following the events of Sept. 11.
While 8 percent of the fee will be used to fund a one-person position whose job is to coordinate international students' visa information into the federal government's SEVIS database, the other $60 will be put toward specific services for international students provided by the International Programs Office, Director Frank Hugus told The Massachusetts Daily Collegian in March.
The rally brought out not only members of the UMass community, but also members from the town of Amherst as well. Gerry Weiss, who works for the public activist group Not In Our Town and happens to be on the Town of Amherst Select Board, spoke out against the fees.
"Since Sept. 11, this country has been on a path of nationalism and xenophobia. And the town of Amherst and the country loses as a result," Weiss said.
At one point Weiss told the crowd to read the protestor's signs to understand his message.
Two of the signs read, "SEVIS is not a service," and "Protection not Persecution."
Craig Sinclair, an international GEO student summed up the event when he said, "We're not going to pay for it and we'll continue to not pay for it until the University comes up with a way to pay for the service ... And that's to pay for it themselves."
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