The Arizona Students’ Association on Friday appointed representatives from each of the state’s three universities to research ways to lighten the financial burden on Arizona students.

Andrew Clark, an ASA member representing the ASU West campus, heads the committee, which has until Sept. 23 to find ways to soften the blow of potential cuts in state funding and tuition raises.

Clark and other ASA members said they are concerned by ASU President Michael Crow’s assertion that the University will need $1,400 more funding per student by the time stimulus funding runs out in 2011.

Clark said that with Arizona’s current economic climate, the University will most likely be forced to raise tuition drastically in the next few years.

“Once the stimulus runs out, we’re looking at a large tuition hike,” Clark said. “I think Crow is being conservative with that $1,400 [estimate].”

Clark said ASA is trying to take a proactive approach to help students deal with the rising cost of attendance.

“We understand that tuition is going to have to go up, but we want to make it manageable,” he said.

ASA members said the details are still unclear, but one possible course of action they discussed is a state ballot initiative for the 2010 elections that would ask voters to decide whether or not to allocate a certain percentage of state taxes to the universities.

If passed into law, such an initiative would be similar to provisions in state law that allocate a percentage of taxes collected from tobacco sales to K-12 education, ASA members said.

This could allow the universities to bring in revenue to replace the stimulus funding, lessening or even eliminating the need for a tuition hike.

The idea was discussed as a possibility at Friday evening’s ASA meeting, and was presented by Justin Boren, president of the Graduate and Professional Students Association at ASU.

“That money would not go through the state Legislature, it would go straight to the universities,” Boren said. “This would solve a number of funding issues because we wouldn’t have to have massive increases in tuition.”

Undergraduate Student Government President Brendan O’Kelly said passing a ballot initiative would be a difficult task.

Advocates would need about 155,000 signatures by the 2010 election, and campaigning would be an expensive, time-consuming task, he said.
“This would take up all of our resources until the [fall] 2010
election,” O’Kelly said during the Friday meeting.

In addition to the ballot initiative, Clark said the committee will also look at ways to increase financial aid, and the possibility of replacing certain textbooks with electronic reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.

“We’re not just looking at tuition,” Clark said. “We’re looking at textbooks, we’re looking at financial aid. We’re looking at anything that could lower the cost of attendance [to the universities].”

University officials said they are not involved in any research or advocacy related to a ballot initiative.

Reach the reporter at derek.quizon@asu.edu.