UC Students Lobby Legislators for Access, Affordability and Diversity

By Alfredo Mireles
Contributing Writer

On Monday March 2, more than 300 University of California students lobbied the California State Legislature during the 6th annual University of California Student Association lobby conference.

The theme of the Conference was “Death of the Master Plan,” referring to the California Master Plan for Higher Education developed in the 1960s by the State government and education policy leaders. The Master Plan had three promises for the students of California: 1. The Promise of Affordability: All public higher education institutions in California would be affordable, and tuition-free. 2. The Promise of Access: Every Californian would have a place in one of California’s three public higher education systems; the top 1/8 at UC, the top 1/3 at CSU, and everyone at CCC, and 3. The Promise of Diversity: All of the state’s higher education institutions would reflect the diversity of California’s population as a whole.

Considering that Governor Schwarzenegger is proposing to increase fees by 9.3% for undergraduates and 12-15% for professional students next year, that this was the first year that not all eligible graduating high school seniors were offered admission, and that after the passage of Proposition 209 in 1995 fewer and fewer underrepresented minority students have been attending UCs, the theme of the “Death of the Master Plan” seemed appropriate to many students participating in the Lobby Conference.

However, students did not go to the Capitol just to mourn. Students spent the weekend prior to lobby day learning about statewide education issues, lobbying strategies and about specific bills that would restore the integrity of the Master Plan to help fulfill its promises.

For instance, students lobbied legislators on Assembly Bill 462: the College Affordability Act of 2009. This bill is a long-term strategy to address both affordability and access through new revenues and strict caps to future fee increases. If passed, AB 462 would tax millionaires 1%, and that funding would be placed in a pool allocated exclusively for UCs and CSUs. The fund would only be accessible after five years of no fee increases to UC or CSU students, and would be used to offset future cost increases for the UC and CSU systems. After the five-year fee freeze had been achieved, students would have to shoulder some of the future increases in college fees. However, student’s fees could only be increased by the California Consumer Price Index (which averages between 3-4% per year) instead of the 10-15% yearly increases students have seen for most of this decade.

Students also lobbied for Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 that would allow campus student organizations to outreach to minority populations. Currently, due to Prop 209, campus organizations cannot recruit based on race or ethnicity. If passed, ACA 7 would allow student organizations to use their own resources to reach out to minority students to educate them about attending college. Since ACA 7 is both revenue neutral, and would not have any affect on admissions, supporters see it as a non-controversial bill that would help educate underrepresented minority students in the K-12 system about higher education.

Although small, UCSF’s delegation attended lobby conference to put graduate and professional school issues on the radar of the Legislature. However, as we learned during out lobbying, it will require sustained advocacy of actual students to make progress on any specific issues.
We got to lobby the Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass’s legislative aide for education about graduate and professional students issues. He told us that graduate and professional issues are something that the Legislature needs to be better educated on, and that there are often few graduate and professional students that visit the Capitol, which leads to the issue not getting its due attention. He did remind us that Speaker Bass is a Physician’s Assistant by training, and that she knows first hand about the costs of graduate health science education.

The fate of AB 462 and ACA 7 are still undecided, but lobby conference was a good experience for those who attended. However, if graduate and professional students want to get some respite on our fee increases, or see other policy changes in the future, we will need to have a larger presence in Sacramento.