MIA CIECHALSKI
Special to The Leader
Jasmine Johnson is a senior art history, drawing and painting major at Fredonia.
That itself gives the public an insight into who she is, her life and what she has been up to recently in the face of the university program cuts.
Johnson has faced many hardships in her lifetime. However, she didn’t let what had happened stop her from moving forward and making a future for herself.
She lost both of her parents who passed away due to drugs, and it has only been her and her sister since then.
They made sure to do what they could to live their lives normally, and they acknowledge that they are lucky to have had so many kind people in their lives.
The reason why Johnson decided to come to Fredonia was because of how affordable it was to attend.
“Many other students don’t have somewhere they can happily call home, and many students like me don’t have reliable resources, which is why affordable schools like Fredonia are so important,” she said.
Johnson has recently become one of the main activists on campus due to the recent budget cuts that have been announced, which are discontinuing 13 current majors at Fredonia. One of the majors that has been discontinued is art history, one of the subjects Johnson is studying.
After hearing that her major will no longer be offered at Fredonia once all of the current students enrolled in that program have graduated, she, along with many others, decided to try and fight this decision.
She said, “By cutting arts and humanities at schools like Fredonia, you are actively making education less accessible and saying that me, and students like me, don’t deserve a rounded and quality education.”
She and many other students have become extremely passionate about these issues, and the people who are enrolled in the majors that are being discontinued know that their future careers are on the line because of this recent decision.
Johnson, along with Abigail Tartaro, a senior psychology major, Sophie Myers, a senior psychology major and Benjamin Evans, a junior writing and animation and illustration major, all wanted the student body’s voices to be heard.
Evans was one of many who coordinated and made the first protest against the budget cuts last December at the end of the Fall 2023 semester.
On the same day that Johnson found out about these program cuts, she also lost her mom.
Once she found out about the protest, she knew that she had to go.
Johnson was at the first protest the very next day.
While she was there, she realized what was to happen next for her.
She said, “I realized what was at stake: the community I fell in love with and call home, the support system I built here, the life I’ve built here and the commitment I’ve made to my education.”
If it weren’t for that first protest, then there might not have been the club we know as Students for Fredonia (SFF). The first protest made Johnson join SFF because she wanted to turn things around and restore Fredonia to the “whimsical place” it was when she first found it.
Not only did this protest inspire Johnson, but it also inspired Tartaro and Myers to join SFF as well. Johnson, Evans, Tartaro and Myers have all worked together since SFF was created and have put over 150 hours of work into organizing events, protests, an Albany trip in which 50 students went to speak to state legislators and, most importantly, making sure to support the faculty and students who are impacted the most by this decision.
Tartaro and Myers were two of the main reasons why the trip to Albany was successful and possible.
They helped to organize it.
Myers spent December through February meeting with United University Professions (UUP) to plan all the logistics of funding, transportation and meetings with legislators.
From them deciding to go to Albany that was sponsoring 50 students, Johnson just couldn’t say no.
“I consider myself a politically active person, and I was honestly just excited to be able to cross off ‘lobby the government’ on my bucket list,” she said.
Not only did this trip inspire Johnson, but it also inspired Chandler Cotter, a sophomore photography major and art history minor, to join the Albany trip.
Cotter was invited two weeks before the trip by Tartaro. “The planning by both UUP and SFF was done very quickly and very efficiently,” said Cotter.
Both Johnson and Cotter thought the overall experience was amazing and they were both incredibly grateful to have been a part of it.
Both Myers and Evans have also been the main reason why Johnson was able to tell her story and speak out about the recent budget cuts. They wrote a 10-page paper about their demands that they then reduced to one page, which they shared at the most recent protest at the beginning of March.
Them sharing their thoughts and demands also gave Johnson the chance to tell new ears about her life story on why these decisions are so important and how they affect current students that are involved in these majors.
Seeing how the faculty and students were reacting has given each of these members a strong sense of community because of how fast everyone can drop everything to be able to attend any event SFF E-board members have created.
“My story is not unique; many other students don’t have somewhere they can happily call home, and schools like Fredonia are so important,” said Johnson.
Chandler Cotter, who was interviewed for this article, is the Assistant Photo Editor of The Leader.