College students in Oregon who have felt the pinch of reduced Oregon Opportunity Grant funding and higher tuition may find some relief in the 2003-05 state budget. At the same time, student advocates are saying current budget proposals don’t go far enough.
Oregon lawmakers released a budget proposal earlier this month that would restore about $8.7 million in total funding for the Opportunity Grant. The package — offered by the leaders of the Joint Ways and Means Committee, which writes the state’s budget legislation — would compensate for the $2.7 million that was lost when Oregon’s rainy day education fund was drained this year to help balance the budget. The proposal would also add an additional $6 million for future grants.
However, some student advocacy officials in Oregon say the outlook is still unclear for future higher education funding. The proposal conflicts with Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s budget, which doesn’t include the extra $6 million to the Oregon Opportunity Grant but also doesn’t cut as much from other areas of higher education. Both proposals would, at the very least, compensate for the grant loss earlier this year.
Melissa Unger, legislative director for the Oregon Student Association, said OSA is supporting different parts of both budgets, including more grant funding from the Legislature’s proposal and fewer cuts to higher education from Kulongoski’s proposal. She added that despite good points from each budget, many students will still be left in the cold.
“Are we going to support the $6 million (to the Oregon Opportunity Grant)? Yes. But that’s not good enough,” she said. “There are pieces we’re going to support in both budgets, but all in all, both budgets are
inadequate.”
Unger added that the budget fight will become clearer as new revenue forecasts are released and other budget’s
aspects — such as cuts to K-12 — are taken into consideration.
Other lobbying efforts have intensified at the University as student leaders work to restore funding for the grant and other need-based funding sources.
“A lot of work right now is centered more around tuition, but implicit in that is the need for need-based grants,” said Adam Petkun, state affairs coordinator for ASUO.
Petkun said an ASUO intern is currently leading a “letter to the editor” campaign in which students around Oregon write letters to their local papers about the need for grant funding in an effort to increase public recognition of the issue.
A postcard campaign is also being organized where students can sign postcards in support of the grant. The postcards will be taken to Salem on May 5 for student lobby day.
“I don’t know whether or not the numbers themselves will hold up, but we’ve done so much work on it,” Petkun said. “Just keeping up the pressure on this should work.”