On Friday, March 7, students on Wayne State’s campus met in Conn Library to hold a protest for science awareness.
The protest was with the group Stand Up With Science, an operation with over 100 volunteers across the U.S. The group set up protests across the United States and in other countries on March 7.
The protests were to bring awareness to science programs, research and scientific research that is being affected by budget cuts from the DOGE office.
Shannon Kennicutt, a junior at WSC and INBRE scholar, arranged the protest to bring awareness to WSC students after finding the protests through social media.
Kennicutt is a biology major with a chemistry and public health minor. She also is an INBRE Scholar (The Institutional Development Award of Biomedical Research Excellence), where she had been doing research about nematodes in the body.
After she had saw that gatherings were happening on other college campuses in Nebraska, she got involved and arranged the protest for students at Wayne. Six students, including Kennicutt, were involved in the protest, holding signs and having conversations with passersby.
Kennicutt had noticed that many in and around Wayne had the opinion that science was only related to medicine and have not recognized other fields of studies as scientific.
“On February 7, the government had cut funding for the NIH (National Institute for Health) and the NSF (National Science Foundation).” Kennicutt said.
This has affected many careers and career opportunities. Kennicutt also said there is a standstill on science.
Some researchers are even backtracking with many organizations and groups researching already proven scientific studies such as the correlation between autism and vaccines.
When asked how this was personally affecting Kennicutt, she said, “I lost a years’ worth of research after funding had been cut to the program.”
She also said that herself and other colleagues were at a lower chance of being accepted into grad school, as the cuts had affected funding for many scientific grad school programs.
When she was asked what advice she had for students and residents of Wayne, she said, everyone should be aware, ask questions and be open to learning.
