Campus & community, Campus news

Students take their case for more funding to Sacramento

By Public Affairs

Hoping to inspire — or at least push — state legislators to reinvest in higher education, students from UC Berkeley and other California campuses converged on Sacramento recently and spoke before the Assembly Budget Committee.

“We need to center student voices in this conversation because we are being left out,” said second-year student Varsha Sarveshwar, leading off some 20 Berkeley students addressing the legislators. The state share of per-student funding has plummeted from $19,100 in 1990-91 to about $7,160 in 2016-17.

“Our state legislators talk a good game about college affordability, but they pass the buck when it comes to actually making the system affordable,” said Sarveshwar, who is leading the lobbying campaign for Berkeley’s ASUC. “While it’s the height of irony for students to miss their classes while advocating for those classes to be properly funded by the state, we’re ready to show our legislators that we will hold them accountable for decades of disinvestment.”

Students from UCLA, UC Irvine and UC San Diego also delivered the message.

To hear from the Berkeley students, watch this video. More information can be found in the Los Angeles Times.