Sacramento State students and staff participated in a flash mob promoting Proposition 30 Wednesday in the Library Quad.

The flash mob went off at noon with students and staff dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” They also handed out fliers regarding information about Prop. 30, the proposition that would sale taxes and income taxes on people earning more than $250,000 to increase the funding for public education.

Physical therapy graduate student Allison McNamara, who helped organize and choreograph the flash mob, said she was glad to take part of a cause that promotes something that can directly impact students in California.

McNamara said CSUs all over the state were doing flash mobs at the same time as a way to get students to learn more about Prop. 30.

“Basically, we really wanted to get the word out because students don’t know a whole lot about it and a lot of students don’t vote,” McNamara said. “This is kind of a way to reach out to students and a cooler way to show ‘Hey, Prop. 30 is here and if you’re interested about it, you can go research it.’”

McNamara said she originally was hoping 20 people would come out to help, but about 50 people showed up to participate.

Speech pathology graduate student Amanda Kwiatkowski participated in the Prop. 30 flash mob and said she thought this was an excellent way to inform students about it.

“I thought it was a fun way to promote it and it wasn’t just another boring proposition where people are talking about it and we don’t know what they really mean or they don’t know what to believe about it,” Kwiatkowski said. “It’s something hands on, it’s dancing to a popular song. It’s a really good way to get the word out and it catches their attention about something important.”

McNamara said she wanted to stress the importance of supporting Prop. 30 to students who may not be informed of the impact it could have on not only their education, but the work and education of younger students and teachers alike.

“Personally, I think it’s very beneficial because if it doesn’t pass, we’ll have another five percent increase next semester of tuition, which is huge and it keeps going up,” McNamara said. “With K12 (students), it’s very effective with this. Teachers have 40 plus students in the classroom and they can’t handle it anymore. My mother is a teacher, I’ve got friends who are teachers and they’re affected by it. It’s our generation – we need to provide for our education.”

Physical therapy instructor and advocate for Prop. 30 Lois Boulgarides said she found out about the flash mobs happening on statewide CSU campuses and suggested it to her students. Boulgarides also said 10 other CSU campuses were participating on the same day.

“We were trying to have it go off at the same time at the CSUs as a show of strength and solidarity,” Boulgarides said.

Boulgarides said she thought this was a great way to promote Prop. 30 and why students should vote for because everyone is living in an important time and to promote it with a flash mob helps expand the audience.

“I feel like we need to have a little bit of fun in these really grim circumstances,” Boulgarides said. “It’s such a terribly important time and we’re all so seriously working on Proposition 30 because it’s so important that it felt good to do something that was fun for ourselves and to get something across.”

Camille Anglo can be reached at [email protected]