CU Students Lobby For More Aid

ALBANY, N.Y., Feb. 13-Seven Columbia and Barnard students and several administrators were bussed up to Albany to lobby for state financial aid increases on Tuesday.

The Columbia/Barnard contingent organized by the Office of Government Affairs was just one of 54 private university groups from around the state that traveled to the capital to participate in the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities' lobby day.

The group of 700 students met with legislators and their staffers during the thick of budget negotiations, which will continue until the legislature passes its changes to Governor Eliot Spitzer's budget by April 1.

In past years, former Governor George Pataki cut Tuition Assistance Program funding only to have it reinstated by the legislature. Since Spitzer did not cut TAP this year, students and advocates from the commission hoped to focus legislators' attention on increasing aid to this program and others.

Students rode the slow elevators at the legislative building from appointment to appointment, urging senators, assembly members, and their staffers to increase the maximum undergraduate TAP grant from $5,000 to $6,000 and the maximum graduate TAP grant from $500 to $1,000. Funding for the TAP program, which granted over $2 million in aid to Columbia College and School of Engineering and Applied Science students and $1.15 million in aid to Barnard students this year, has not been increased since 2000. The maximum award given to students today is actually lower than the amount awarded in 1990.

Six of the seven Columbia/Barnard student lobbyists were participants in the state-funded Higher Education Opportunity Program or its Columbia-funded sister program, the National Opportunity Program. The 110 CC and SEAS students currently enrolled in the HEOP program are accepted based on their New York residency and their financial need. For example, students in the program may come from two-parent families of four which earn incomes under $27,800, or families of three with incomes less than $22,350.

Students accepted into the HEOP program at Columbia must have also demonstrated "potential for success at Columbia University," according to the director of Opportunity Programs and Undergraduate Services Jason Collado.

Da Quan Rong, SEAS '09, who immigrated to the U.S. from China when he was eight, said that since his family makes less than $25,000, college without TAP and HEOP would have been "unthinkable" for him.

Columbia receives over $500,000 in aid from the state to offer grants, guidance, tutoring services, and a five-week-long pre-orientation program to its HEOP students. Over $400,000 is spent on the program at Barnard.

Students lobbied for a 20 percent increase in HEOP funding, raising the total to $29 million, by informing legislators and staffers of their personal experiences.

Eliseo Santos, CC '09, a first-generation college student, said HEOP's pre-orientation program helped him to build a network of friends and become acclimated to campus life. "It exposes you to what to expect from your first year," he said.

Ybelka Medina, BC '08, said if it weren't for the HEOP program, "I would have probably gone to work, wherever I could have found a job."

Students said they had mixed feelings about the responsiveness of legislators and staff members. Many staffers could identify with the students, noting that they were still paying off student loans themselves. Others simply took down the information provided by the students and promised to forward it along.

Many students were reassured by Leslea Snyder, the assistant director of the Senate Higher Education Committee and the representative of the chair of the committee, Sen. Kenneth LaValle. Snyder said LaValle was currently negotiating TAP increases.

During his meeting with HEOP and NOP students, assembly member Danny O'Donnell, D-Morningside Heights, was not specific about the funds he would seek to add to the higher education budget but expressed support for students' efforts.

"Why are they [the legislators] talking about it [financial aid]?" he asked. "Because the students are in the building. Without advocacy, there is no movement."

Tyeisha Chavis, CC '08 and a participant in the Columbia-funded NOP, which is open to non-New Yorkers, agreed. "I think of Woody Allen," Chavis said. "Ninety percent of success is about showing up, [showing legislators] there are college students who are registered voters and are involved and want to change things."