The Arizona Students’ Association is renowned for its involvement with higher education, its advocacy efforts and its powerful representation of college students.
This past weekend, Sept. 24 to 26, the Sun Devils, Lumberjacks and Wildcats met under one roof to mull over issues that Arizona students are dealing with as of late. I was in attendance and, to my surprise, so were community college students.
There’s no avoiding the vibe that differentiates community college students from those of us who are willing to pay thousands of dollars more in tuition fees to belong to a school with a better football team and brand. We’d like to believe that our similarities are few and far between, however, we both face a lot of the same issues.
For starters, we’re all thousands of dollars in debt, and will be for the next 40 years. Not to mention financial aid is also looking a little slim. Only a week ago, the Arizona Board of Regents decided to cut the financial aid it gives a high school student for the AIMS scholarship by 75 percent.
We’re all scrambling for money in these hard times, and we all worry about whether a job will be waiting after we’ve graduated.
We all mourn our empty pockets and silently curse (some aren’t so silent) administrations when our files are lost or our credits don’t transfer.
On a smaller scale, we all wish that dining had more vegan choices, that our classes weren’t half the size of our entire high school and that we were more than an ID number. We mull over class choices, gripe about outrageous textbook prices and wonder whether it’s normal to change our major six times before finding the right fit.
We may come from two relatively different worlds and campuses, but we all want the same thing: cheap education, reasonably priced textbooks and a future.
At the conference’s close we left with the Arizona Students’ Association not only in support of the state universities, but each community college as well. In a matter of two days, we had grown from 100,000 students strong under the ASA umbrella to over 600,000.
The Arizona Students’ Association may have thrown us all into the same arena, but from this we learned that we aren’t fighting one another, but are fighting together. We should be weeding out corruption in our education system, not each other.
A united front, 600,000 strong, is going to look frightening in comparison to a bunch of suits that have been making our decisions these days. Considering the upcoming elections and the fact that higher education is constantly on the chopping block, we’ve made a move for the better.
Let it be known that history was made. Universities and community colleges are tag teaming in the name of education.
Send your complaints about tuition and more to Brittany at bemorri1@asu.edu
