Despite the Department of Administration announcing the Capitol would be closed starting 4 p.m. Sunday, protesters refused to leave, some prepared for arrest, but police never forcibly removed demonstrators from the building.

Religious leaders, union members and University of Wisconsin students said in a press conference they would practice civil disobedience and allow officers to arrest them if law enforcement began forcing protesters out of the Capitol, which opponents of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill have occupied since Feb. 15.

Alex Hanna, co-chair of the Teaching Assistants’ Association, said he would stay and risk arrest because he said the move to close the building was political and only masked as a cleaning requirement.

“This is a politically motivated decision to close the building. Students have been stewards of this building and have helped to keep it clean,” Hanna said.

Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison, took the floor at 3:30 p.m., encouraging protesters to follow him out when the building closed.

“We are winning,” Hulsey said. “What we need to do now is walk out those doors at 4 p.m.”

However, at 4 p.m., nearly 300 people chose to walk up into the rotunda, ignoring Hulsey and an intercom message announcing the building was closing and asking protesters to leave. However, after an hour of drumming, dancing and chanting, police had not made any arrests.

Charles Tubbs, Capitol Police chief, said no one would be arrested if protesters obeyed the law and remained peaceful.

The decision from DOA to close the building at 4 p.m. came after a series of restrictions limiting access and carry-in items were announced last week.

The implementation of restrictions, forcing the protesters to leave, would be a travesty for what the Capitol building stands for, said Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine.

“It would be a departure from the idea that this building has always been the people’s Capitol,” Mason said.

He added the concern is the actions to close the Capitol would be done in an effort to quiet protesters and change the scene in the building before Gov. Scott Walker’s budget address Tuesday, Mason said.

Tubbs cited public health and building maintenance reasons for closing, asserting safety is still the top priority of the Capitol Police.

“Everyone agrees that our state Capitol is a source of pride for our state,” said Tubbs. “We should take a break to take care of the building.”

The Joint Committee on Legislative Organization approved a rule Wednesday restricting public access in certain areas of the building beginning at 4 p.m. Friday. By 6 p.m. Friday, the South Wing was closed while political statements and rumors circled the Capitol’s halls.

Cullen Werwie, spokesperson for Gov. Scott Walker, said in an e-mail the list of items to be removed from the building, which included potential fire hazards such as mattresses, tables in hallways, folding chairs, storage of food and cooking appliances. The e-mail sparked further concerns about forcibly removing protesters.

Beginning Saturday, people were not allowed to carry blankets or sleeping bags into the building, according to Tubbs.

As of Sunday night, no arrests were recorded.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.

There is no historical precedent for cutting global health funding during times of economic crisis, according to a study released one day after the U.S. House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor defended such cuts at the Institute of Politics on Thursday.

David Stuckler, assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, coauthored the study, “Does Recession Reduce Global Health Aid? Evidence from 15 High-Income Countries, 1975-2007.”

According to Stuckler, the study originated from concerns that the U.S. and other countries would cut their global aid budgets in response to the financial crisis.

The study found that while some countries scaled back their foreign aid during recessions, other countries, such as Australia and Germany, made commitments to increase funding,

“There are better ways to finance recovery than by cutting vital support to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable groups,” Stuckler said. “The U.S. greatly benefits from investing in global health because it improves security and economic growth.”

“It’s a win-win situation—and part of the reason why President Bush began increasing these commitments in the first place.”

On Thursday night, Cantor (R.-Va.) defended cuts to global health funding as one of the sacrifices Congress must make to balance the budget.

Cantor’s speech was met by protests from the Harvard College Global Health and AIDS Coalition.

Global Health and AIDS Coalition member Krishna M. Prabhu ’11 said that while the group is now targeting Republicans, their mission is, and will always be, non-partisan.

“It’s like a tennis match—you target whoever has the ball in his court,” he said.

While Stuckler’s study supports the Global Health and AIDS Coalition’s cause from an academic and policy viewpoint, it probably won’t change the messaging the group uses, Prabhu said. He added that the group will continue to frame the issue in terms of the people who will be affected by these cuts.

“It’s not that we don’t have the money, it’s just that we don’t choose to spend the money that way,” said Lily H. Ostrer ’14. “When you look at it, health aid is less than one-fourth of 1 percent of our spending.”

Members of the Harvard Republican Club, however, maintained that this is an issue about the deficit, not about foreign aid.

“We are at an unsustainable pace of spending and there are very difficult decisions to be made with cuts. Not every cut is going to be popular,” said club Vice President Kevin R. Palmer ’13.

“Both parties need to work together to cut the size and scope of government and get us towards a balanced budget.”

But members of the Global Health and AIDS Coalition said they believe the budget can be balanced in other ways. Krishna Prabhu’s sister, Mythili Prabhu ’13, pointed to a repeal of the Bush tax cuts and other tax measures as possible sources of revenue.

At Thursday’s forum, she asked Cantor a question about the funding cuts. She said she found his response disappointing.

“We’re not satisfied, and we won’t stop asking these sorts of questions,” she said.

Throughout President Barack Obama’s push for health care reform, the common portrayal was that health care reform was the equivalent of entitlement reform. All Congress would need to do is pass the Affordable Care Act to see long term solvency for all of America’s entitlement needs. Obama’s budget director, Peter Orzag, very bluntly propagated this falsehood in the Washington Post, in which he is quoted as saying, “Let me be very clear: Health-care reform is entitlement reform.” While medical inflation is problematic, at double the rate of overall inflation, it is not the primary driver in the expected expenditure growth – population aging is.

While the budget director was factually incorrect in implying that the Affordable Care Act would curb entitlement spending, the bigger misrepresentation is the implication that Social Security expenditures are not a problem that must be addressed. This is simply incorrect, insofar as every year that goes by without Social Security reform, reforms will hurt more in their implementation.

Both the 2009 and 2010 Social Security Trustees Reports mark 2037 as the date for insolvency. The date is very simple to decipher when looking at the projections for revenue and expenditures. It is based on there being very high cash flow surpluses from the mid 1980s until the mid 2000s, averaged with the projected cash flow deficits from 2015 onward. Clearly, this is not sustainable.

But the true fiscal problem is even worse. In determining the solvency of Social Security, the trustees count the surpluses as if the government is holding the physical assets in an account, even though this is not the case. The surpluses are used to buy bonds from the Treasury, and the bonds pay off other government spending. The assets in what is commonly called a “trust fund” are simultaneously liabilities. So long as there isn’t a surplus on the general budget, there isn’t a true surplus being saved for Social Security. Quite the opposite, America is currently facing the largest budget deficits and highest public debt in history.

If America was amassing national debt all those years, while also having surpluses from Social Security, imagine the fiscal scenario in the upcoming years as Social Security becomes purely an addition to that deficit rather than a mitigator. The bond-rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, projected that by 2017 rising debt levels could cause Treasury bonds to lose their triple-A rating, falling to junk status by the late 2020s. Now, factor in that our Social Security deficit only begins as our bond rating is expected to be lowered.

Furthermore, Social Security is not an individual retirement account that workers pay into, and never was intended as one. Rather, it is a program intended as a transfer of wealth from the currently working to the currently retired, with the government promising the “investors” that future generations will do the same for them when they retire. This should sound awfully suspect. After all, if there is a decrease in the growth of the working population or an increase in the retired population, people will get a bad deal. In fact, according to Social Security’s trustee, the only difference between Social Security and a ponzi scheme is “one of intent” with no difference in the financing.

If Social Security benefits remain at the same levels, students will inherit a bad deal. They will be forced to pay a greater portion of their wages to Social Security for current beneficiaries. Those wages could otherwise have been saved in private investment for retirement. In this way, keeping current benefits at current levels detracts from current students’ retirement. If reforms took the opposite course and limited benefits, current and upcoming beneficiaries would get a worse deal. Either way, reform will have to be made because the current path is unsustainable.

Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew,recently tried to dismiss this reality in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, saying, “Social Security does not contribute to the deficit in the median term…2015-2020, so there is no need to deal with Social Security.”

Factual error aside, this is an admission by Obama’s administration that they will not touch the benefits of the entrenched interests currently receiving Social Security, or those who will receive Social Security in the near term. Rather, the administration will put further jeopardy on the retirement of our generation of students. To this, students ought to be opposed.

Last month after the BYU men’s basketball team upset San Diego State 71-58, the student section stormed the court at the Marriott Center. This weekend, Cougar fans gave their team the road win equivalent.

Two hours after BYU knocked San Diego State off the top spot in the Mountain West Conference with an 80-67 victory, a group of about 125 loyal fans gathered at Provo Municipal Airport to welcome their team home and congratulate the players on their win.

The fan club braved a 30 degree chill and soggy snow to see the hometown team. But Jake Darley, a BYU student from Jackson, Wisc., said he wasn’t about to miss this chance to be part of the basketball team’s big day, no matter what the weather.

“This is history in the making,” Darley said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s one of the biggest games BYU has played in basketball history.”

Elliot Winters, a student from Prosper, Texas, said BYU star Jimmer Fredette makes this year a special one for BYU basketball.

“The last time we were talking about a player like this, it was Danny Ainge,” Winter said. “That was our parents’ generation. Jimmer’s our generation. It’s something to get excited about, it’s cool.”

The impromptu event started with the Front Row Fanatics, who quickly spread the word through online message boards, text messages and Twitter.

The crowd was mostly made up of students, but also included a few alumni who brought their young children into the cold to get a glimpse of Fredette and his teammates.

Tamber McAllister and her husband Eric brought their 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son to the tarmac.

“We’re a BYU family, that’s for sure,” McAllister said. “We love the Cougars, so we’re just coming to support them.”

Noah Hartsock said the warm welcome was an extension of the San Diego climate.

“The weather’s a little bit different in San Diego, it’s not as sunny here,” Hartsock said. “It’s great to be out here, it’s a lot of fun to see the fan support. It’s really nice.”

BYU head coach Dave Rose said loyalty from fans this season, like that shown at the frigid Provo airport on Saturday, has made every win a little sweeter.

“It was a great win, and we’re really thankful to all these people who support us,” Rose said. “But we’ve had great support all year.”

Amid the swarm of fans, Hartsock said he was also focusing on what this win means for the future.

“It’s great for us that now we don’t have to worry about anybody else in the conference,” Hartsock said. “We just have to worry about ourselves right now. If we just do the right things and win, we’re going to come out first place [in the MWC], and we did our best and we did our part. We just have to keep going.”

A UT graduate student stood with protesters in downtown Cairo as they barricaded themselves against military attacks and fought for a revolution in the midst of former President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

Law and urban planning graduate student Sherief Gaber flew straight into Cairo on Jan. 30 to join the protests in Tahrir Square before Mubarak stepped down from the Egyptian presidency. Gaber, who grew up in the United States but holds dual citizenship, booked a ticket to Egypt on Jan. 28.

The protests began on Jan. 25, when Egyptian citizens rallied for a democratic government. More than 300 Egyptian civilians were killed before Mubarak ceded power to the military on Feb. 11. Mubarak was in power for more than 30 years.

“I knew I was just going to be one in a million people there, but I thought on the one hand, my being there would be a way to communicate to people back here what was going on from the perspective of just one among many, not a journalist,” Gaber said.

On Feb. 2, Gaber used a metal barricade to protect other protesters in Tahrir Square. After stepping out from behind the barricade for a moment, he was hit in the face with a stone. He saw a flash of white before getting a nosebleed and losing vision briefly in his right eye, he said.

“There was this moment where the government kind of brought in a bunch of paid thugs with weapons to basically attack the square,” he said. “I was roped into protecting the people in the square. There was this feeling that if we did not stand there and stop them from coming in, they would have killed everybody in the square that night.”

Gaber said he hopes to return to Egypt as soon as possible to celebrate Mubarak’s resignation.

“It was amazing,” he said. “It was different every day. The situation was constantly changing, but overall it was the most exciting place I’ve ever been in. When you were there, when you were in the square, it was like a festival. But you weren’t there to see an artist or anything. You were there to participate with these other people.”

Egypt’s military is not as strong as many believe it to be because of desultory training, poor maintenance of equipment and dependence on American funding and logistical support, said government professor Clement Henry in an article he and Naval Postgraduate School professor Robert Springborg published in February. A civilian government similar to that of Tunisia would work for a country like Egypt because of the similar uprisings and military- and police-based governments, he wrote in the article.

“Since he has dual citizenship, [Gaber] was doing his civic duty,” Henry said.

The dissolving of the Egyptian government came as a shock, said undeclared communications freshman Katelyn Usher, who moved to Maadi, Egypt, in the eighth grade and attended high school there. Maadi is a suburb about 15 minutes south of Cairo.

In addition to news coverage, Usher received mobile updates on the situation from people in Cairo who had access to satellite phones after the Internet and phones were shut off by the government, she said. It a relief that the protesters got what they wanted, she said.

“My dad said they’re just so excited that they won,” she said. “They’re cleaning the streets and painting the trees with the flag colors and passing out stickers with ‘January 25.’ I would love to go there now and celebrate with the Egyptian people.”