Hundreds of thousands of students may essentially be kicked out of school very soon if a proposal by the Bush administration to severely cut student loans is passed. Students across the country rely on these federally subsidized loans to insure that they can pay their college bills. The government guarantees these loans and fixes the interest rate at a reasonable level - President Bush; however, has proposed to cut these loans in order to make up for a budget shortfall that has occurred because of his tax cut last year and a slowing economy.
These loans are extremely important for hundreds of thousands of students who could not otherwise afford to go to school. The idea that in an economic downturn we ought to cut funding to support higher education for lower income students is absolutely abhorrent and shows how short sighted this administration really is. The last economic boom was built on the backs of technological advances that could not have occurred without the support of students at universities across the country many of whom got federal loans to pay for their education.
During an economic downturn we ought to increase support for higher education in order to help stimulate new technologies that will help our economy grow. Furthermore, because of the economic downturn, fewer people can afford to pay for school. Despite the difficult economic times most schools are increasing their tuition. Students are either going to need more aid to pay for these rising costs or many students will be forced to drop out.
Despite all of the strong arguments against cutting student aid, President Bush has proposed a $1.3 billion cut in federally subsidized student loans. The only plausible explanation for this idiotic move is that Bush does not think that we will either notice or take action against his cuts.
The cuts in federal aid were buried in the back of the Sunday newspaper and did not even make it into some papers. If this were a cut to Social Security or Medicare it would have been on the front page and senior citizens from around the country would converge on Washington to stop the cuts. In fact, seniors not only vehemently oppose any cuts to Social Security but also if the increases are not large enough, seniors will mobilize against the increase. Senior citizens are one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington because they vote at extremely high rates and because they have access to a resource that cannot be rivaled by any other lobbying group- free time.
Students, however, caught between finals and frat parties, rarely even find out about these cuts let alone march on Washington. President Bush is taking advantage of the lack of organization and voting power in younger communities and we must not stand for it. I know that it is the end of the year but we as students must do our part to let Washington know that we will not stand for this kind of abuse any longer.
I call on students from across this campus begin a massive mobilization effort to stop these cuts. Call your Congressman. Call your Senators. Call President Bush and let them all know that we will not be treated as a weak voting block and we will flex our political muscle. Then call five friends and get them to do the same. The general switchboard for Congress is (202) 224-3121. The White House phone number is 202-456-1111.
We need to put ourselves out there as a leader in this debate and show the rest of the country that students can have an impact on national policy and we will stand up for our rights. I call on the University to use their political clout in Washington as well. We have lobbyists who help to insure that funding for research and other endeavors flows to Tufts. In this case we can use our lobbyists in Washington to insure that funding continues to flow to our students. Universities from around the country must work together on this issue to stop the President from cutting student aid.
We can effectively use this issue to build a student and University mobilization effort in order to insure that student's rights are not trampled on in the future. The problem is larger than just the one issue. Students and universities are not organized together to be able to lobby on issues such as this one. We are fragmented around the country are aside from sporting events we rarely meet. But the organizational ability of these universities is astronomical if we just work together. Let's first stop this idiotic proposal to cut our aid and then let's build an organizational capacity such that no one will ever consider cutting our aid again.
