Attention to all Arizona State University students, staff, faculty, and community:
Last year, across the state of Arizona, students organized, demanding that the Arizona Legislature not follow through with a proposed budget cut of 40%. We mobilized mass support for our representatives, but the truth of the matter is that the university budget was still cut by 20%. Once again we are being presented with a proposed tuition increase of 5%, in addition to a surcharge of over $1000.
Students, staff and faculty are increasingly being forced to contribute to the financial development of the University. In return we receive an education of decreasing quality and less access to critical resources.
The Board of Regents’ proposed increase to our cost of attendance does not seek to improve our education system, but rather supplement the money which the state legislature has failed to provide. Administration elites and student representatives who have accepted this proposal have failed us. We need to go beyond maintaining the minimum. We need to reverse the policy of demanding that students shoulder this burden of divestment.
Tuition hikes represent the continuous shifting of costs from the public to the individual. While the state fails to provide funding, individual students are asked to make up the difference through higher fees. Meanwhile the quality of education is declining as students are driven to work more hours, their lecture classes are pushed online, and classes are restructured to accommodate a larger capacity.
March 4th, 2010 we will move as students to reclaim the University, to voice our refusal of any tuition increase. The spaces organized by the institution to discuss these issues have not given fair representation of the student body and have denied us the opportunity for open dialogue. We are being excluded from discussion, decision-making and now education itself. The representatives we have depended on have let us down.
By creating our own forum for students, by students, we are exercising the very right to access which these surcharges threaten. We are providing – for ourselves – the opportunity to build community.
Thursday, March 4th join us and let your struggle be heard! Share your opinion, story, critique. What will a tuition hike mean for you? Every voice matters.
Meet at the Fulton Center at College & University at Noon to begin the fight against exclusion.
This is YOUR campus, YOUR education. Speak Up!
