A civilized town hall meeting briefly turned into a barnburner at San Francisco State University.
With what many view as devastating cuts to state schools on the horizon, a coalition of people concerned about state university funding organized the meeting Thursday evening. About halfway through the two-hour session, some students became tired of listening to business, education and health services representatives voice their concerns for them.

Creative writing major Cathy Arroyo stepped up to the microphone, along with fellow undergraduate Ed Hernandez, and demanded more participation from those who will be directly affected by the cuts. "You know, a lot of these speakers say that 'I'm a graduate of this institution,'" Arroyo yelled to the cheers of several hundred students and faculty packed into the Cesar Chavez Student Center. "Well you know what, I haven't graduated yet."

Arroyo then invited students, who originally had been granted the opportunity for just two people to speak, to come up and voice their concerns. Several took her up on the offer, as those studying fields ranging from gerontology to social work spoke on proposed cuts to higher education.

"This is the sixth-largest economy in the entire world," Hernandez told the crowd. "And they can find the money to spend on prisons and to go to war, but they can't find money to fund our education." Arroyo then led about 50 students outside the center, where they held their own separate session on strategies to avert the education ax.

Meanwhile, as the meeting went on inside, educators, business leaders and elected officials spoke about the importance of the continued funding for California's state universities. Of particular interest was the governor's proposal to scrap the Educational Opportunity Program, a program that provides financial and academic support for students with disadvantaged backgrounds.

In an attempt to whittle down a $15 billion budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $240 million in cuts to the California State University system. The cuts include the elimination of outreach programs and could result in a 10 percent rise in resident undergraduate tuitions and a 40 percent rise for graduate students.

Many of the speakers were former SFSU graduates who emphasized the opportunities the university gave them. Some had also benefited from the EOP program that is in danger of being scrapped. Professor Michael Potepan from the SFSU Economics Department came armed with a study he performed last year, which concluded that for every dollar taken out of the university, it drained $5 from the local economy.

"The spending cuts in education have gone too far -- they are about to kill the American dream," said Barry Shiller, a retired vice president for semiconductor company Elantech. "That the next generation in life will have a better go-around than the previous one, that is the American dream and that is what's being threatened right now."