SESP junior Samantha Reed joined about 2,000 Illinois college students who roamed the halls of the Illinois capitol building in Springfield on Thursday. These students were part of a protest successful in rallying the Illinois government to restore funds for Monetary Award Program grants.
The Illinois Legislature reinstated the funding for MAP grants, a scholarship program which provides aid for Illinois college students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. After previously cutting funds for the program in half, the legislature approved Senate Bill 1180, which Gov. Patrick Quinn signed Sunday, to restore $205 million for the remainder of the 2009-2010 year.
Bradley University’s student senate led the coalition of the 136 institutions who have students receiving grant funding. Patrick Campbell, Bradley’s student senate treasurer, said he and the senate realized the lack of funding would drastically affect the university.
“We actually have 1,500 students who stated ‘We won’t be able to come back to school,'” he said. “When you have a campus of only 5,000, that affects the make-up of the campus.”
Campbell, along with the Bradley senate, sent proclamations to each of the 136 universities, but only received about 50 back. These proclamations had seven parts to them urging the Illinois government to reinstate the Monetary Award Program Grants. Northwestern’s Associated Student Government was one of the schools to receive and send back a proclamation.
ASG President Mike McGee said he was contacted in early September about the rally and coalition.
“I wish I could have gotten more involved and gone to Springfield,” the Communication senior said. “I wanted to do something to get involved in this, so we thought passing a resolution and sending it down there would support them.”
McGee, a grant recipient at NU, said he wanted to get involved not only because of how it affected students at NU, but because it’s a widespread issue affecting other peer institutions as well.
“Students shouldn’t be dropping out of school because of the government,” he said. “And that’s the reason that I got involved.”
NU pledged to cover the costs of these grants had the government cut them. Michael Mills, associate provost for University enrollment, said he was pleased with the restoration decision.
“We were going to take (the money) out of our budget, and it would’ve been $1.1 million,” he said. “It’s going to help the University because every dollar we would have had to spend on MAP grants would’ve had to come from somewhere else, resulting in less financial aid for next year.”
Muhammad Safdari, ASG academic director, met with Campbell and other student leaders in Peoria less than two weeks ago.
“It was really organized with what they’re doing,” the Weinberg senior said. “They were getting phone calls with representatives, and I thought, ‘There’s one week left, we should do something to support this cause.'”
Last Wednesday, ASG unanimously passed emergency legislation to support the proclamation.
Reed said she attended the protest to support some of her friends who receive the grants.”People were overwhelmingly positive, but you could definitely sense their frustration,” she said. “They told their personal stories. One of them was a mother who had been a victim of domestic abuse and was going back to school to get an education.”
Reed said students walked around the capitol building to meet with their university’s local legislatures, and she met with Illinois State Senator Jeff Schoenberg, who represents Evanston.
“He was in support of reinstating the MAP grants,” she said. “But he said the biggest problem is that we don’t have a funding source, so even voting to reinstate MAP grants is not enough to solve the problem.”
Though the Illinois Senate passed the legislation, they had doubts as to where the money to fund these grants would come from.
“They ended up voting in favor of it, but they didn’t vote a way to pay for them,” Reed said. “It’s still a problem, and it’s going to come up again next year.”
