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Congress passed the federal budget last week, and though there are still some issues to be hammered out before final approval, the United States Student Association is celebrating.
In its latest Legislative Update, USSA calls the budget “a sweet victory for students,” as it contains provisions that would eliminate student loan program subsidies to private lenders and convert Pell Grants to an entitlement program — both of which mean more support for students in need. The budget also includes $89.4 billion in discretionary spending for education.
For updates on the implementation of these budget provisions and info on how you can get involved, reach out to USSA at their website or check out their new blog — the newest addition to the Student Activism blogroll.
The Arizona Students’ Association and the Associated Students of the University of Arizona have put up a powerful slideshow on the University of Arizona’s proposed tuition increase:
The idea behind the slideshow is simple: Let students speak directly to the increase would change their lives. Real students, real impact.
The statements speak to a wide variety of effects — “a third job,” “my little brother’s ability to come here,” “a plane ticket to visit my dad.” Each tells a personal story, and each gives that story a human face.
It’s a great, powerful statement. Go look.
And if you’re running an anti-tuition campaign of your own, maybe you should bring a camera and a whiteboard (or a pad and sharpie) to your next rally.
Here are the thirteen demands put forward by the students who sat in at the University of Vermont yesterday:
1. REVOKE all DISMISSALS and non-reappointments thus far issued.
2. TERMINATE all plans for more layoffs and non-reappointments of staff and faculty.
3. Return positions that have been reduced to part-time back to FULL-TIME status.
4. Issue a statement of NEUTRALITY respecting the right of staff and faculty to ORGANIZE.
5. DISCLOSE all budget reconciliation options that were reviewed and considered prior to the decision to initiate layoffs.
6. DISCLOSE all information related to administrative compensation and bonuses.
7. Return ALL administrative BONUSES from FY `08 and FY `09 to the UVM general fund.
8. Return administrative salary pool to the 2002 levels.
9. Pursue all legal options to utilize the university’s ENDOWMENT to close the FY `10 operating budget gap.
10. CAP rate of TUITION and room and board fee increase at corresponding year rate of inflation.
11. Establish with us a democratic process by which students, staff, and faculty have a decisive role in decisions regarding the budget.
12. CAP student body population at Fall 2009 levels.
13. REINSTATE the varsity Softball and Baseball teams.
Arizona State University has a big commencement speaker, and a big PR problem.
Last Wednesday the State Press, ASU’s student newspaper, broke the story that the university would not be giving President Obama an honorary degree when he speaks at their commencement next month, and ASU has been scrambling ever since.
A university spokesperson told the State Press that honorary degrees are bestowed on the basis of a lifetime of achievement, and that “because President Obama’s body of work is yet to come, it’s inappropriate to recognize him at this time.” Since then, however, research has revealed that ASU has given honorary degrees in the past to humorist Erma Bombeck, Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo, and a long list of the university’s major donors.
On Friday ASU president Michael Crow offered a new explanation for the honorary degree decision. In an email to students, he said that the university does not grant honorary degrees “to sitting politicians, a practice based on the very practical realities of operating a public university in our political environment,” but criticism continued to mount.
Crow tried a new tack the next day, announcing that one of the university’s scholarship programs would be renamed the “President Barack Obama Scholars program.” Crow’s statement also declared that the program would be expanded, but as the State Press reported, it “did not say how much the scholarship program will be expanded or when it will begin.”
In an editorial to be published in tomorrow’s paper, the State Press notes that the university’s decision has sparked a round of ASU-bashing in the national media, with students bearing the brunt.
“ASU has been labeled,” it says, “a school where students go to get ‘a master’s degree in lawn-mowing.’ It has been labeled a second-rate university. It has been labeled a racist party school.” All because of a “decision made by a six-person committee.”
A decision, the State Press is too modest to point out, that the nation only learned about because of the intrepid work of the university’s student journalists.
Last year fifty students at Atlanta’s Spelman College were forced to drop out because of financial hardship, and with the nation’s economy reeling, prospects for 2009 are looking considerably more grim.
And so, an effort to keep the student body together, the student government of the nation’s first historically black college for women has created an emergency scholarship fund.
The new fund builds on projects the student government undertook last semester, when it created a free textbook program for students in need and persuaded Aramark, the college’s dining services provider, to provide meal plan subsidies to selected undergraduates.
The student government has provided $10,000 in seed money for the new emergency scholarships, and is connecting current students with potential donors in a letter-writing campaign to raise more.
studentactivism.net 
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