Members of Binghamton University’s Student Association have been working to obtain signatures for two budget-related petitions, both a part of the “Many SUNYs, One Voice” program initiated at the State University of New York SA conference last month.
Liz Joyce/Contributing Photographer
Since the Oct. 24 conference, there have been two rallies, one held Wednesday and the other the week before, held at BU in response to the New York state and SUNY budget cuts.
The mission of these rallies, led by members of the SA’s Research and Planning Committee, was to speak to as many students as possible on the “spine” and “brain” of campus to get them to sign the petitions. The petitions focus on Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) reductions, budget cuts to the SUNY system and the state of New York.
According to Lawrence Faulstich, chair of the Research and Planning Committee, both petitions are endorsed by the SUNY SA and are available for all SUNY schools to take part in.
The first petition is an initiative put forth by the SUNY SA where students sign pre-addressed formal letters to Gov. David Paterson’s office.
It is still unclear whether SUNY SA will want the actual signatures or just a number of how many people signed the petition, Faulstich said.
These letters, which will be sent after they are collected by the SUNY SA, state that SUNY students do not think these cuts are right.
According to Faulstich, these letters argue that the students are being hurt by the cuts and request that these cuts come to an end.
The second petition, written by Faulstich and Assembly chair Elahd Bar-Shai, was voted on and approved by student representatives at the SUNY SA conference. It is more aggressive and directly addresses the problems related to Paterson’s cuts and how they should be dealt with.
“The state retained 90 percent of last semester’s tuition increase to help plug a $1.6 billion hole in the 2008-09 state budget. The retention of these tuition monies for non-educational purposes is clearly an unfair tax that falls only on SUNY students and their families,” the document states.
It also states that many points of the budget proposal must be amended, including the disproportionate cuts to SUNY, SUNY being treated as a state agency affected by blanket budget cuts and larger class sizes.
The bottom of the petition right above the student signature line asks students to agree that “any tuition increases should remain within the SUNY system” and that “both enacted and proposed budget cuts to SUNY will significantly reduce the quality of the academic services offered by the state,” as well as the value of a degree from BU.
Faulstich said this is something students cannot say no to.
“They don’t want to lose the value of their degree and, as such, have a vested interest in signing these petitions,” Faulstich said.
Many BU students believe that these petitions are important to all students because budget issues will affect everyone.
“It directly affects everything about us, from classroom sizes to tuition,” said Erin Walsh, junior history and sociology major. “I think there are other places that money could be taken from besides us.”
Leanna Lynch, an undeclared freshman, echoed Walsh’s opinion and said that as an out-of-state student, these budget cuts affect her as they affect the whole student body.
Another student believes that the situation is two-fold.
“I believe that the state is not doing anything really wrong by increasing the tuition and giving less of it to SUNY; they’re just apportioning less money to the SUNY system in the face of tough economic times,” said Jeremy Goldstein, a junior philosophy, politics and law major. “With that being said, the education of the future generation should be of the utmost importance to the state and the cuts, therefore, should not greatly affect the SUNY system like they are.”
While there are no more rallies scheduled, members of the Research and Planning Committee will bring petition packets with them wherever they go on campus to continue getting as many signatures as possible.