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| Senate Opposes Schwarzenegger's Budget Cuts | ||||||
| Senators Erik Jolliff and Zaira Tinoco proposed a resolution to the Associated Students Senate Wednesday denouncing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts to higher education and the educational opportunities program, or EOP. | ||||||
| The resolution, which the Senate voted to send to the Documents & Bylaws committee for editing, was co-written by the two senators and compiled from several resolutions that had been passed at other CSU-system schools. | ||||||
| Jolliff said he believes the resolution to be important because "EOP and outreach programs are vital to our campuses for people who otherwise would not be able to attend and have difficulty succeeding in higher education." Schwarzenegger, according to the resolution, "has proposed cutting $239.7 million or nine-percent from the California State University system for the 2004/05 fiscal year," and has suggested "eliminating state support for outreach funding." | ||||||
| EOP, the resolution says, "has successfully provided assistance to low-income undergraduate students from disadvantaged economic and educational backgrounds; thus becoming an important contributor to the CSU mission and the goals of the California Master Plan for Higher Education." Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting $52-million from this program, which will effectively eliminate any further state support for it. | ||||||
| Tinoco, echoing Jolliff's sentiments, added that the resolution "is not just like any resolution we have passed before; this one is more active. We are committing ourselves to allocating the proper resources to get the word out to students." She also said that she hopes the resolution would "educate students and get [the Senate's voice] in the legislature." | ||||||
| The resolution also highlights other disadvantageous effects from the proposed budget cuts, including the reduction in "new freshman enrollment by ten-percent at U.C. and C.S.U. campuses." Specifically, this would "[eliminate] the opportunity for approximately 3,200 freshmen at U.C. and 3,800 freshmen at C.S.U., from entering public higher education institutions." Jolliff and Tinoco said they hope to educate students about this pressing issue, and believe that the proposed cuts "diminish the quality of education." | ||||||
| In other news, Shant Baboujian, president of the Armenian Student Association, urged the Senate to uphold the resolution that he wrote last semester denouncing acts of genocide, which the Turkish Student Association now wants the Senate to rescind. Baboujian said he believes that the Turkish Student Association had enough opportunity to come forward and disagree with his resolution. Vice President Guido Piotti reminded the Senate, as well as the Armenian and Turkish students in attendance, that "there is no guarantee to what decision we will come to next week [when they vote on the issue]." As Baboujian closed, he said, "After this all dies down, hopefully [the Armenian and Turkish students] can work together" to come to terms. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2004, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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