In New York, hundreds of students and faculty at Stony Brook University held sit-ins and demonstrations Wednesday to protest proposed $1.5 million budget cuts to the Humanities and Language departments. The cuts would particularly affect the Hispanic languages and cultural studies.

Gabriel Rudas: “My name is Gabriel Rudas. I’m a graduate student from the Hispanic Languages and Literature Department. We came here to protest against the irrational cuts Professor Sacha Kopp is doing against our department. We stand for the high quality of the research and for diversity, and we think that these cuts are a discriminatory measure taken against the Latino community.”