Students unite to fight cuts to budget - Jim Bach and Leah Villanueva, Diamondback Online

While lawmakers finalize the state’s budget for the upcoming year, they have another hurdle to tackle: Higher education and student leaders have rallied to fight proposed cuts to the University System of Maryland. State legislators still have two weeks to finalize the budget, but the House of Delegates and Senate have proposed drastically different bills — the Senate bill proposes a $5.3 million cut to the system while the House bill proposes nearly $20 million. But system officials and students said they will advocate for the smallest cuts possible since students will inevitably face a tuition increase next year, and officials argue they are barely scraping by as is. In the wake of the proposed cuts, student representatives from 10 system institutions — including this university, Towson University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County — have formed the group USM Students for Affordability group, which aims to avert these cuts through grassroots activism. Student leaders wrote an open letter, which they plan to send to every member of the General Assembly, and have begun rallying students across various campuses.