Calif. students take tuition issues to ballot

Nitisha Desai
The Daily Tarheel
Nov 20, 2007

University students in California are taking the tuition war into their own hands.

Students from the University of California and California State systems are uniting to get an initiative on the November 2008 ballot that would freeze tuition for the next five years by imposing an additional 1 percent tax on incomes more than $1 million.

Students will need to collect 433,971 signatures in 150 days, starting this December, to get the initiative on the ballot for a state vote.

"It's largely a volunteer effort. A lot of big campaigns will pay for signatures, but we really can't do that," campaign director Chris Vaeth said.

Tuition for the UC and CSU systems has nearly doubled in the past six years, prompting this student action for creating the ballot initiative, Vaeth said.

"Everything else wasn't working," he said. "(The ballot initiative) circumvents the legislators and goes straight to the people."

Andy Willis, vice president of government relations for the UNC system, said a student-led ballot initiative to change the tuition policy would not work in North Carolina.

"There just isn't a referenda mechanism in the state to do that. The students here did the right thing by going to the Board of Governors."

UC spokesman Ricardo Vázquez said that the system would prefer not to increase tuition but that rates would depend on how much money the state provides. CSU spokesman Paul Browning echoed the idea.

"We just approved our budget that will be sent to Gov. (Arnold) Schwarzenegger," Browning said. "If we don't get additional funding, there's always a possibility of student fees increasing."

The UNC system was fortunate in the last budget cycle, receiving a 10.6 percent increase in state funding.

"The reason our tuition is so low for so long is because of taxpayer support," Willis said, noting that about 40 percent of tuition funding comes from taxpayers.

He said the California students face a tougher prospect.

"They have raised tuition a lot more than we have, and that's probably what energized and exercised the students," he said. "If they get it on the ballot, it may very well pass."

Vaeth said California citizens are concerned about the tuition issue, citing a poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.

"Eighty-four percent of Californians think that college affordability is a problem. And those numbers are way up from before."

And Browning said CSU-system officials "applaud the efforts to be a part of the legislative matters."

"They have a tough time - a lot of them work, some work full time and go to school full time," he said.

Eve Carson, UNC-Chapel Hill student body president, said she agrees with the California students' aim.

"I like the idea of student activism, and I like what they say about affordability, not only for the middle class but for the entire state," she said.

Willis said the hot issue in North Carolina is not tuition hikes in general, but tuition increases for out-of-state students.

"For out-of-state tuition, if you found five out of 150 members (of the N.C. General Assembly) that were sympathetic, you would have done a good day's work. Most of them probably say they aren't charging enough."

Willis said many legislators think a state university should serve its residents and are less concerned about tuition for out-of-staters because neither they nor their parents can cast votes for them.

But he said legislators do not have to deal directly with tuition anymore, as the UNC-system Board of Governors has been given control of tuition policy.

"(The legislators) are politically shielded," Willis said.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.