HARRISBURG — Hundreds of chanting, sign-waving students rallied Monday in Harrisburg to protest proposed cuts in higher education — and some of them ran a 100-mile relay to get there.

About three dozen Lock Haven University athletes said they ran in shifts for 13 hours or so beginning Sunday night from their central Pennsylvania campus, each running between 10 and 17 miles in sub-freezing temperatures, to reach the rally. They reached Harrisburg on Monday morning for the raucous rally on the steps of the Capitol, where educators at a legislative hearing inside pleaded for additional funding.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has proposed slashing spending by 50 percent for the 14 state-owned universities in the State System of Higher Education, as well as Pitt, Temple, Penn State and Lincoln. State system officials have said that would result in steep increases in tuition or the loss of many jobs.

The students chanted, blew horns and banged on drums and tambourines and waved signs reading “Fine, I’ll Just Be A Stripper,” “Save Our System” and “Raise Corporate Taxes, Not Class Sizes.”

“I make $9 an hour and I’m getting stepped on by the people who represent me,” freshman Nicholas Imbesi of Kutztown University in Berks County said. “It’s time for the governor to remember that we’re the ones who are paying for the house he lives in. He needs to wake up and see that we are the future.”