A crowd of nearly 200 students, faculty and community members delivered a petition protesting the cuts being made to Humanities programs at the University of Montana on Friday afternoon. 

Some students sang songs, while others held signs addressing subjects ranging from awareness for homeless veterans to others who were concerned that the University of Montana may lose its place as the liberal arts college in Montana.

UM student Mary Jones told KGVO News that the March to Main Hall would climax with a petition with over 2,000 signatures delivered personally into the hands of UM President Royce Engstrom.

Jones acknowledged that budget cuts are necessary due to reduced enrollment, but she believes they should be allocated more effectively.

"We have looked at the numbers, and we believe the Humanities are being directly attacked," Jones said. "We want the administration to know that we think liberal arts are important and that more time and resources should be spent on that and we should not be taking away from those programs."

Jones said the budget cuts should be more even handed.

"It's been postured that the cuts are enrollment based, but we're seeing drastic cuts in the Humanities that have not so much been explained, but they said 'go look up the statistics on Google', not any real explanation as to why that's been done," she said. "We just want the administration to know that there is a significant group of people that are not in support of what's being done."

The group presented the petition to the President's Office.

 

 

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