At 4pm on Wednesday September 10th, students gathered on the UNH’s Great Lawn to protest the state budget cuts. A state budget passed in June cut nearly $18 million in funding for the University of New Hampshire (UNH), with more cuts planned for next year. They were felt universally as programs were closed off to new students, 12 staff and 36 unfilled positions were cut, and student resources were defunded.
The protest was organized by UNH College Democrats (UNH Dems), a student democratic political group that engages in local, state, and national party campaigns. Though he did not start the group, Coriaty took over last spring and has since grown it from the two people it began with.
Coriaty spoke to the group on the importance of getting involved, saying, “the next step and the hardest step by far is getting out and acting on it. Getting organized and knowing, ‘hey, there are gonna be more budget meetings, there are gonna be more attacks on students from Concord’ and we need our own little army, and I hope that’s what we’re seeing the start of today.” Coriaty graduated last spring but officially passed the torch to Schaier, as she was elected the new president of UNH Dems at their last meeting.
Schaier was the primary organizer of the event. After hearing students’ frustration with the cuts and expected rise in tuition, she set out to give students a space to be frustrated, and to be heard among their peers. “I wanted to provide a space where students could come and talk about and express their feelings and have their voices heard and learn about where these actually came from.” Now the president of the UNH College Dems, she hopes to continue to provide an outlet.
Left to Right: senate candidate Karishma Manzur, Rep. Heath Howard, and Rep. Wayne Burton speaking to students and community members at the protest.
A few members of the New Hampshire Democratic Party showed up to support students looking to protest and fight the cuts to public universities. Howard spoke to the crowd about the larger impact of the cuts to student services like the campus pharmacy, where students are now charged a delivery fee. “When we pay the highest in state tuition anywhere in the country, I expect the bare minimum of services.”
Evan Tyler (‘29) was passing by that afternoon when he stumbled upon the protest. He ended up staying for the two hours that the protest lasted, as well as signing the contact list and joining UNH Dems for their next meeting. Tyler said, “I’m spending $3,000 of my own money out of pocket to pay for this semester, […] it’s directly affecting me, whether I get involved or not, so l’d rather get involved.”
As Coriaty was nearing the end of his speech, he quoted Representative Burton from earlier that afternoon, saying “it only takes a few very, very dedicated student activists to truly make a change. To go down to Concord and say, ‘Hey, you can try to pull this, but we are going to send all we got at you and say, our education and our future is worth fighting for’.”
-Elise Bacon
Mouth of the River 
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