Some University students attended the event in Illini Union Room C to honor the student winning the Illinois Innovation Prize, but other students attended with a different and more disruptive motive in mind.
When students heard Governor Bruce Rauner would be at Thursday morning’s award ceremony to congratulate the students for their engineering achievements, they created a Facebook group titled “Welcome Governor Rauner @ UIUC.”
This Facebook page is where student protesters planned to meet at the Union at 12:45 p.m. to protest Rauner’s visit to the University and his proposed cuts to higher education.
The group of about 50 student protestors does not belong to one specific organization. Rather, they describe themselves as a group of “like-minded thinkers,” said Richard Daniels, junior in music.
“He kind of snuck by us, but once we reached him on the east side (of the Union), we started the chants and everything, pretty much right in front of his face,” Daniels said. “The police officers and security kind of had to hold us back so we couldn’t get too close.”
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The chants included such phrases as “Rauner go home,” “they say cut back, we say fight back” and “cuts means us.”
The protesters pursued him to the second floor of the Illini Union and then down to Illini Room C, chanting the whole time.
When Rauner entered the event, about 20 protesters were able to enter the room to hold up signs and “cackle” at the governor; the remaining 30 protesters then went around through the kitchen to the south lounge of Union, Daniels said.
There, they loudly banged on the Illini Room C walls from the outside of the room for the majority of the time Rauner spoke, which made Rauner’s speech almost inaudible.
Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson greeted the protesters and asked them to stop, Daniels said, and the protesters asked her to join them.
Wilson said she agreed with the protestors’s message, but disagreed with how the protestors were handling the situation.
The protesters argued with aggravation they should be allowed to protest “someone who’s been so against adequate funding for our university,” Daniels said. “Then, we figured out Rauner was done speaking so we just ignored her and ran away from her, but he slipped out the back before we could get to him.”
Overall, Daniels called their protest a success because of the limited time Rauner spent on campus.
“He spent like 10 minutes on the second floor while we were all chanting, so I doubt he was able to get his message across, and then he spent like 30 seconds speaking and that was supposed to be his main speech,” Daniels said. “There’s no way he was planning on spending this little time here.”
Daniels said the protesters’ main motivation was to send the message that Rauner is not welcome here and Daniels thinks they definitely sent that message.
Alex Villanueva, junior in LAS, said he agrees that the governor should not cut funding for the University but does not agree with how the protest was carried out.
“The means are not conducive to what we are trying to do, and I don’t think it is representative of who we are at a world class academic institution,” Villanueva said.
Villanueva said Rauner came to campus to recognize a group of students and what they have accomplished at the University, and that is part of the reason Illinois needs a budget. But instead, protesters politicized the event.
“I think the biggest losers today are the students and the College of Engineering staff because their event was politicized, and in many ways, it was ruined,” Villanueva said. “(The protest) takes away from all the hard work the students have done.”
Villanueva said an alternative and sufficient way to express their feelings could have been to stay on the sidewalk in front of the Union and Rauner would have seen the protesters as he was driving by.
Chasing and chanting at him is where the line was crossed, Villanueva said.
“They can’t have it both ways, they can’t have him come and see the great things we are doing here, and when he finally does come, yell at him to go home,” Villanueva said. “That’s not going to make him feel sorry for us and ultimately, we need his pen.”
