The student association at Saginaw Valley State University is sending buses full of students to a rally at the Capital to protest Governor Rick Snyder's proposed cuts to education. I'm going and I need your help with my sign.
Never heard of SVSU? That's understandable. It's not a big name powerhouse school like University of Michigan or a land grand school like MSU. It's a small school with small classes and relatively affordable tuition that serves the mostly lower income, mostly rural communities that surround it. It graduates a lot of teachers and nurses, along with folks who want a decent, affordable undergraduate degree then head off for a more expensive big name graduate degree. The point is, we're students who can't afford higher tuition and a school that doesn't have much waste to be cut.
Over the eight years that Jennifer Granholm was Michigan's governor, higher education was cut by 15%. If Rick Snyder's new budget proposal passes, funding for higher education will be cut by an additional 15% in just one year. I can't begin to tell you how many of my classmates already struggle to afford to eat after their tuition is paid. Cuts like this will send many of them home without degrees and add to the state's problems, not fix them.
The trip to Lansing and the rally are being called "WTF" (Where's the Funding). Since I'm quite lacking in imagination, all I can come up with for sign ideas are things like:
"I thought Nerds liked school" and "Make the people your priority, Rick"
That's where you come in. Kossacks are some of the smartest people I know. Help me come up with something great to put on my sign. Bad things are happening in the Midwest. Help us wake up Michigan.