Since January, the University of California Student Association
has been working with students to lobby for changes in several of
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal measures on
higher education .
But when the budget compact was released Tuesday morning, the
UCSA realized its voice was not yet heard and its words not yet
heeded.
The organization looks forward to working with the Legislature,
which was also left out of the loop in compact negotiations, said
Matt Kaczmarek, the chair of UCSA and Undergraduate Students
Association Council external vice president.
As of yesterday, the governor and university officials reached a
budget compromise in which the state has proposed to scale back the
fee hikes and enrollment limits, and cut funding to outreach
programs.
The university officials would in exchange accept a one-time
steep budget cut in the fiscal year starting July 1.
But the UCSA rejects the compact reached by Schwarzenegger,
California State University Chancellor Charles Reed and UC
President Robert Dynes, Kaczmarek said.
Along with Haig Hovsepian, external vice president for the
Graduate Student Association, and almost 30 other UCLA students,
Kaczmarek lobbied in Sacramento for measures more favorable to the
UC system and its students.
Both of them attended the UCSA Lobby Day on April 19 and
participated in the preceding UCSA Lobby Conference, but their
campaign started long before.
Kaczmarek and his team of three had to send letters of
introduction, set up initial appointments in March, and arrange for
final appointments in April.
“When we speak with the legislators, our goal is to
educate them about the negative results of cutting university
funding,” Hovsepian said.
If the UC system is going to be cut, then the future economy of
California will go down with the institution, he added.
Some of the requests that UCSA student lobbyists made to the
legislators’ offices were increases in funding for financial
aid and outreach programs, as opposed to decreases in the former
and elimination of the latter, Kaczmarek said.
More specifically, the UCSA is also lobbying to keep student
fees down and stop the reduction of admission and financial aid,
said Amalia Chamorro, the UCSA legislative director.
In a press conference Tuesday, Kaczmarek expressed that the
compact is an unacceptable solution because it forces students to
pay more for both undergraduate and graduate fees than was
initially proposed in January.
“I think the UCSA would have loved to have been part of
the negotiations as well,” said Kaczmarek.
UCSA calculates that the undergraduate student fee hike of 14
percent and the continuous fee hikes of 8 percent per year
afterward will actually be more than the January proposal of 10
percent fee hikes over three years.
Both Kaczmarek and Hovsepian had expressed frustration that
higher education was cut disproportionately last year. The K-12 and
community college education funding was not cut as drastically in
the budget, Kaczmarek added.
But if the UC Board of Regents does cut the budget, it should
not target the graduate students as it did last year, said
Hovsepian, who lobbied with legislative offices of Assemblymembers
Cindy Montañez, Dennis Mountjoy, Judy Chu and Lou
Correa.  Â
One UCSA initiative is Education, Not Incarceration, which
reveals the unfairness of last year’s budget by showing that
the prison system was not cut at all last year, Hovsepian said.
Moreover, the prison system overspent by $500 million, he
added.
Another measure of the proposal that the UCSA is lobbying
against is already in effect for the incoming class of 2004-2005.
The measure reduced freshman admissions by 10 percent, thereby
saving the state $25 million.
As a result, many more freshman applicants were declined
admission to the UC system and given the option of studying two
years at a community college before transferring to a UC
campus.
“This compact passes over the entire graduating class of
this year,” said Kaczmarek.
But under this new deal between state and higher-education
officials, the governor has promised to fund annual growth
enrollment increases of 2.5 percent from current figures, starting
2005- 2006.
The UCSA is also lobbying against the proposed elimination of
outreach programs, such as the Early Academic Outreach Programs at
the University of California level and the Upward Bound at the
California State University level.
With the compact, there is not outreach money promised by the
state, Kaczmarek said.
“So Cal State universities will be continuing enrollment
reduction and the UC will be itself funding outreach programs with
$12 million,” he said.
The proposal to cut outreach programs is misunderstood by many
legislators because there is a rumor that these programs are
recruiting tools, Chamorro said.
Instead, these programs serve the underrepresented areas by
providing mentoring and counseling services.
The UCSA will continue to fight the proposal with or without the
help of the university administration, Kaczmarek said.
“Tomorrow, the students will be back in the halls of the
Capitol, fighting for fee increases, full funding for outreach and
more freshmen enrollment,” he said.