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From Brotman Hall to the governor’s fax machines

Fighting against the proposed $386 million educational budget cuts, the Alliance for the CSU collected signatures and fax memos on Monday behind Brotman Hall to send to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office in Sacramento.

“We’re basically trying to jam up his fax machines,” said Tom Pinkava, a regional field representative for California Faculty Association.

Over the weekend, 659 faxes from Long Beach were delivered to Sacramento in protest of the proposed higher education cuts.

“People have been getting a few hundred faxes a day,” said Lydia Sondhi, a family and consumer science associate professor and the Long Beach chapter president of CFA. “We’ve got thousands of signatures being collected statewide.”

The faxes and signatures collected are aimed to persuade legislators to support the “CSU is the Solution” campaign and emphasize the impact of universities on the economy in hopes that Schwarzenegger will reconsider a budget that makes cuts to public higher education.

“We do have legislators, Republican and Democrat alike, that are acknowledging that education is important to this economy,” Sondhi said.

Out of every degree awarded in the state, the California State University system grants 51 percent of the engineering degrees, 52 percent of agricultural degrees and 65 percent of business degrees, as well as a large amount of teachers and nurses.

“The economy is the CSU. The CSU is the economy,” Sondhi said. “If you stop putting money into the CSU, you’re hurting the economy.”

After learning of possible tuition increases, many students disagreed with the idea of cutting educational funds.

“It would be best that it would stop, but I’m not sure what other services should be cut in order to lower tuition,” said senior graphic design major Nelson Lournco. Still, Lournco said fighting the tuition increases “is something that should be done.”

Some students said that degrees requiring extra equipment and facilities, like the sciences, will find the budget cuts the most threatening because of the larger budgets needed for educational tools.

“All our labs are old and in need for repair,” said Miguel Morales, a sophomore biology major. “It’ll definitely affect people in the sciences because of all the stuff we have to use.”

Morales signed a fax to be sent to the State Capitol after walking by the booth and learning more about the budget cuts than he had known before.

Sarah Montero, a sophomore creative writing major, was mostly worried about the availability of teachers and the toll the cuts could take on most teachers’ incomes.

“There’s a lot of good teachers out there who could lose their jobs,” Montero said.

Cheyenne Eichner, a senior accounting major, said she didn’t believe the proposed cuts were an immediate problem, but that they would follow CSU students past graduation.

“It’ll affect me later” Eichner said. “Most of us are on loans so we don’t notice right now when it’s in small increments, but down the line I will notice when I’m paying them off.”

The Alliance for the CSU has collaborated on all 23 CSU campuses, and will continue on to its “Step 3” of the coalition. “Step 3” involves CFA and Alliance for the CSU returning to the State Capitol for lobbying in order to show policymakers that they are fighting the CSU budget cuts until the end.

California’s legislators “need to put their priorities in order,” Sondhi said, to ensure that “education doesn’t take a hit.”

Effects students may feel if the budget cuts happen, according to the Alliance for the CSU:

10,000 eligible students may be declined acceptance

Increased tuition

Classroom size will increase as more classes and teachers are cut

Infrastructure and equipment inadequacy

Longer graduation rates

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