CUNY and SUNY students (as well as faculty) are sick and tired of being used as pawns in the Governor's serious game of budget cuts. While David Paterson waits for a bailout from the future Obama Administration, he is laying a large cut on the students of CUNY and SUNY by way of a large tuition hike. Leaders in Albany expect the young to be politically ignorant, but across the system people are organizing. At SUNY Purchase, students are getting creative to draw attention to their protestation of the tuition increases.
From The Journal News:
Students have been punished by budget cuts and tuition increases before, but now it is just too much. This is exactly the time to not touch education, as many of the recently unemployed look to more education to secure a job in these tough times. An immediate hike will not allow the limited amount of financial aid to adjust and many students will not be able to stay in class. Six hundred dollars may not sound like a lot to a Governor that is looking to cut $2 billion, but to the individual struggling to pay bills, work and attend class, it could make or break the path to a college degree.Purchase College students embodied the message that they are tired of being treated like pawns in the governor's budget by dressing up and acting out a human game of chess in the center of campus yesterday.
"We wanted to do something representative of how we feel," said Anna Helhoski, 20, a junior who helped to organize the event. "We are people, we're not pawns, and we shouldn't be treated as such."
About two dozen students rallied in hopes that Gov. David Paterson and the state Legislature would rethink a proposed tuition hike for the State University of New York system.
Similar events were staged throughout the SUNY and CUNY system, with more than 12,000 postcards being signed and sent to the governor with the message: "We're tired of being pawns!"
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