“We’re opposing these recent budget cuts because we don’t feel they’re fair to us, because they’re going to have a drastic effect on our college campus and our community, while at the same time we’re wastefully spending on the military budget right now,” said Adam Stern, a committee member and the rally’s organizer.

The rally lasted 20 minutes, with people speaking on military and education funding. The last 10 minutes of the rally was opened to speakers in the crowd that gathered to listen. Two voiced disagreements with the rally’s theme.

“You can’t get a good job these days without education; we all know that. But we can’t expect the government to pay everything for us. If we sit on our ass all day, we shouldn’t be able to go to school; it’s a privilege to go to school,” said Ben Lawlor, a third-year, 24-year-old biology student and Air Force member.

Lawlor said people have to support soldiers fighting wars such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doug Allen, a philosophy professor and the committee advisor, said he and committee do support soldiers and that most of the military’s budget does not help troops who, he believes, are often forgotten once they get home.

“We could better support troops by cutting funding,” Allen said.

Anya Rose, a graduate student studying ecology and environmental science, said her graduate assistantship was cut two weeks ago and that she is scrambling to make up for it. She estimated a typical fighter jet cost $2.8 billion, which could pay for about 700,000 graduate students per year at UMaine.

The F-22 Raptor, one of the Air Force’s fighter jets, cost $102.8 million in 1997, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a group that works to educate the public on potential dangers of scientific advancements.

“Cutting social programs such as education is apparently the government’s answer to where it will get the money to pay for the trillions of dollars in bailouts that it has already handed to banks and corporations. In doing so, they are completely ignoring the elephant in the room that is the bloated military budget,” Stern said. “After Obama receives his latest $85 billion for emergency spending in Iraq, [the military budget] will also be a trillion dollars.”

The pentagon spends $300 billion a year to dispose of military equipment – 80 percent of which is new, Stern said.

“We have to give a certain level of respect to the people who go out there,” said Ben Braley, a fourth-year secondary education student.

Allen said he respected Lawlor’s and Braley’s comments but felt Lawlor “was afraid people were disrespecting people like him” and that the government manipulates people like Lawlor by offering a promise of education that isn’t fulfilled.

Rally supporters and committee members stood outside the library, 14 of whom held signs with phrases such as “imagine if we spent $200 million on education” stood outside the library.

The action committee asked students and community members to sign letters petitioning Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and UMaine President Robert Kennedy to pressure politicians to transfer military spending to education.

“Education is the first step to making everything better,” said Amber Kapiloff, a fourth-year English student who signed the letters.