Special commentary by Andrew Bateman
(sgapresident@mscd.edu)
Andrew Bateman is President of the Student Government Assembly
On Monday, March 9, the Metro Student Government Assembly will be leading a march to the capitol, where it will join with students and student organizations from across the state of Colorado in asking the State to save higher education. We are calling upon the students of Metro to join us.
As you are reading this, the legislature is in the beginning stages of determining the Colorado state budget for 2009. With the economy in trouble, the 2009 budget is likely to sustain enormous deficits. With the law as it stands, higher education will bear the brunt of these cuts.
Colorado is already 49 in the nation for higher education funding. Within that already limited pot of funding, Metro gets the least amount of funding per student.
From the early estimates, it looks as though Metro will be cut more than any other institution next year. What this means for you is higher tuition, larger class sizes and less course sections. It also means Metro may have to begin turning away qualified students for the first time in the school’s history.
To make matters worse, the Arveschoug-Bird provisions in the state law books restrict the state from ever being able to recover from these massive cuts. The law says the state can increase the general fund by no more than 6 percent over the previous year. Since this is approximately how much the cost of state services increases each year, the net result is the state can never increase funding. So, when the state makes these enormous cuts to higher education next year, they will be permanent.
To understand the effect of the Arveschoug-Bird law, imagine that you spend $100 on food every week this year. In 2010, you get to increase that to $106 (6 percent). In 2011, you lose your job and work part-time, so now you can only afford $80 a week. In 2012, you get a job that pays what you made in 2009, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re still only allowed to spend $84.80 a week, due to the 6 percent limit. In fact, at this rate, you won’t be able to return to your 2009 levels until 2015, regardless of any raises or promotions you get. Meanwhile, the cost of food is going up 4-7 percent every year, so even though you are allowed to spend $100 a week again, it buys much less food than it did in 2009.
Senate Bill 228, sponsored by Sen. Morse (D) and Rep. Marostica (R), would repeal the Arveschoug-Bird law and allow the state to begin to restore funding to the starving state programs, including higher education, once the economy recovers. If this bill is not passed, it is likely Colorado will be stuck in a permanent recession for the foreseeable future. This will not only cripple higher education, but K-12, transportation, Medicare, corrections, law enforcement, and every other service that relies on state funding.
For more information on the Arveschoug-Bird laws and other state funding issues, visit the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute at http://www.cclponline.org.
Students, join us on March 9 and be a part of Colorado’s future. If you want to make sure that your tuition stays low and your teachers keep their jobs, take a couple of hours out of your day to walk to the steps of the capitol and make a difference.
We will begin to gather and distribute T-shirts and signs in the Tivoli Commons (between the Tivoli and the Plaza Building) at 10:30 a.m.
At 11:15, I will address the crowd and the press and make our intentions clear. At 11:30, we will depart from the campus and be escorted by police through downtown Denver to the capitol building where the Associated Students of Colorado will be holding their press conference at noon.
For most students, this means missing a single class, at worst, which is a small sacrifice to save higher education in Colorado.
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