Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Students seek more education funding, get doughnuts

Sandoval

AP Photo/Cathleen Allison

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, right, speaks to a group of students and human services advocates outside the Legislature on Wednesday, May 18, 2011, in Carson City, Nev. The group has been camping outside the Legislature to show support for a Democrat tax package that would help ease cuts to state education.

The student campers who briefly constructed “Sandoville” on the lawn of the Legislature came to Carson City last week looking for a fight.

Angry at Gov. Brian Sandoval for his unwavering insistence on cutting millions from the education system to avoid a tax increase, the students organized by liberal activist groups wanted to send a strong message.

Some came with the idea of stopping traffic on the main highway through Carson City or blocking the legislative parking garage.

Convinced that those measures would simply antagonize lawmakers and the public — and probably result in some arrests — the students ditched those plans.

Instead, they decided they’d do a sit-in at the governor’s office, refusing to leave until Sandoval met with them. But the governor was in Las Vegas on the afternoon they had planned the sit-in.

So, again, their civil disobedience plans were scrapped. That led them back to the Legislature, where they regrouped and plotted ways to provoke intransigent Republican lawmakers into having a conversation with them.

In the end, the 60 or so student protesters left Carson City — after weathering freezing temperatures, rain and snow in poorly equipped tents — without the aggressive confrontation they had sought.

Rather, they were plied with doughnuts by the governor and pizza by the mining industry. Republican lawmakers sat on the floor in the hallway of the Legislative Building and had that conversation. And traffic flowed freely in and out of the parking garage.

Students left Carson City with mixed feelings about their impact.

“It’s good to show students are still engaged in the process,” said Kyle George, president of UNLV’s graduate student association, who helped organize the protest. “Did anything change from the governor’s point of view? No. But I like the fact we have a dialogue with the Republicans now. They haven’t agreed on anything yet, but at least we’re talking.”

Students chalked up two civil disobedience victories. Unable to schedule a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, they sat on the floor in his office and the hallway. Then they stalked him to his next committee meeting, standing up en masse and following him out the door when he went to take a phone call.

Eventually he had a conversation with them.

“It was hilarious,” said Mike Flores, a student and one of the protest’s paid organizers. “I’ve never seen so much legislative police. They were all around him.”

In a disheartening signal on their final morning in Carson City, all but one Republican on the joint money committees voted against capping tuition hikes to offset cuts at 15 percent.

Again, en masse, the students stood up and walked out of the hearing. It was the one somewhat cathartic moment of showing their frustration.

“Some want to lash out and vent frustration and so for them that’s very appealing,” George said of the group’s earlier plans for more disruptive protests. “But the only goal we have is to restore funding to education. Any action that doesn’t move us closer to that is pointless.”

Both George and Flores described the doughnuts and pizza from their opponents as “nice” but meaningless gestures (though they admitted to being grateful for the food).

Still, Republicans managed to defuse some of the students’ frustration by simply being human.

George and Flores said they had little hope of actually penetrating Sandoval’s anti-tax armor. And the hallway conversation with conservative Sen. Mike Roberson, R-Las Vegas, did nothing to move him. (“There’s no lack of confidence there,” Flores quipped.)

But they felt as if they reached Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, who gave them more insight into how the closed-door budget negotiations actually work, and Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, seen as a swing Republican in the tax fight, appeared moved by their testimony, Flores said.

As a result, Republicans may have come out ahead following the encounters — at least for the moment. Instead of simply being faceless political targets to the students, some of the lawmakers are now real people, who convey genuine empathy, engage in real conversations and bring doughnuts and pizza.

Yet losing a fight to fund education may be easier to take from a faceless political target than someone who first appeared concerned but voted against you anyway.

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