Published 2012-05-15T19:02:00Z”/>
Ben Mullin
Six students shouted that they were drowning in debt Wednesday, but they were held above water by inner tubes and water wings.
The students, some stripped down to their bathing suits, waded into Big Chico Creek and held aloft cardboard signs reading “Drowning in debt,” “C$U Chico” and “Stop cutting classes.” As passersby walked across the concrete bridge between Glenn and Plumas halls, the students yelled slogans.
“Our school is highly liquid,” shouted Colton Wanner, a junior sustainable manufacturing major, gently paddling his inflatable raft against the current of Big Chico Creek.
Next to him, on the south bank of the creek with a bright blue plastic water wing was Mitchel Davidovitz, a junior music industry and technology major. Every few seconds, he gave a huge blast from a whistle and yelled a slogan at someone walking on the bridge above.
Like Davidovitz, some of the students who joined the protest are former leading members of Occupy Chico State, he said. The university’s Occupy movement, which protested rising student tuition and bloated administrator salaries at the end of fall 2011, has lost speed because of diminished student interest.
Communication between Occupy Chico State members broke down over the winter intersession, and now many of the people who spent their nights outside for student advocacy have stopped coming to Occupy meetings, Davidovitz said.
“People have conceded that this is the way things are,” he said.
The students who joined the creek protest laughed as they each tried to outdo themselves with progressively more ridiculous puns.
“School is for fish,” Wanner yelled. “This is a university.”
Although the students were laughing about their protest, Davidovitz said they were sick of the California State University system taking advantage of students and that he and his group expected students to understand their message.
“I think they take us seriously,” he said. “I’m worried the administration isn’t taking us seriously.”
Junior political science major Steven Perle, who watched the protest from a nearby bank, said the protest’s main purpose was to spread awareness of the constant cuts made to the CSU.
As the group began packing to leave, Davidovitz said that another purpose of the protest was to get students excited about advocating for themselves.
“Students just need to be more involved,” he said, squeezing the air out of a green and white inner tube.
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<strong>Ben Mullin can be reached at</strong>
<em>[email protected]</em>
