Faculty and staff members at the University of Illinois at Chicago will take an anger-fueled field trip on Monday to visit a growing, bedeviled species: financially beleaguered politicians. One can predict the topics of discussion -- and those likely to be avoided.
Several hundred people from the university will fan out and both rally and lobby local and state officials, including Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, about the state budget mess and against the near certainty of more cuts and increased tuition.
They're calling it "A Day of Education in Defense of Public Education," and participants will make virtue out of necessity, venting on one of four furlough days mandated for the rest of the school year. Central topics include the $500 million that the state owes the University of Illinois for a fiscal year that's almost over.
Dick Simpson, the decidedly sober but deceptively passionate head of the U.I.C. political science department, said he had not seen this much on-campus emotion and faculty mobilization since the campus was closed after the 1970 shootings of students at Kent State University by members of the Ohio National Guard.
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