Students staged a sit-in and gathered signatures for a petition Thursday in Bird Library in protest of Syracuse University’s tuition raises. They presented the petition to university administrators Friday.

As part of a national day of action against tuition raises at universities, SU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society called for lock-in tuition rates, as well as student representation on the Board of Trustees and a limit on employee salaries. SDS also invited the New York Public Interest Research Group. NYPIRG set up a table where students could write letters to the state legislature regarding the budget cuts to the State University of New York and Tuition Assistance Program.

From noon to midnight Thursday, approximately 20 students were gathered at any given point during the day on the first floor of Bird. SDS set up tables to gather petition signatures and sat on the floor of the first level of the library. SDS garnered approximately 700 to 800 signatures and presented the petition Friday to Thomas Wolfe, the senior vice president and dean of student affairs, and Donald Saleh, the vice president of enrollment management.

About 14 students wrote letters for NYPIRG to send to Sheldon Silver, speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Mike Sampson, the Democratic majority leader of the New York State Senate. The letters are meant to tell lawmakers how the cuts to the SUNY budget and TAP aid will affect them personally. NYPIRG has collected a total of approximately 40 letters and is sending them Tuesday, said Alejandro Fernandez-Lovo, project coordinator of the local NYPIRG chapter.

The state is cutting $148.8 million from the SUNY budget. The state will be cutting $75 from all TAP awards, a cut that will affect all college students who receive the aid, Lovo said.

NYPIRG does not have a stance on the things SDS was petitioning, SU’s tuition or its budget, Lovo said.

This protest was one of many across the United States as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Education. The nationwide protests originated from plans by students in the University of California system to protest a 32 percent raise in tuition in October.

‘We want to send a message to kids across the country that we need to have a discussion and propose solutions to these problems,’ said Ryan Hickey, president of SDS and a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The SDS petition calls for lock-in tuition, which would ensure students pay the same tuition for every year they are at SU. Lock-in tuition is needed to ensure students can make an informed decision about whether to attend SU based on the prices and the amount of aid they are getting, Hickey said.

At Wednesday’s University Senate budget meeting, SU Chancellor Nancy Cantor announced plans to raise tuition by 4 percent next academic year. This is the lowest planned tuition raise in 44 years. Last year, tuition was raised by 4.5 percent.

Student Association President Jon Barnhart said he hoped to work toward lock-in tuition during his campaign last fall. Barnhart, who was not at the sit-in, would still like to see lock-in tuition implemented but said he doesn’t see it happening anytime soon. But he also said it’s hard to lower tuition when students also want better facilities.

‘We run into an interesting problem when students say they would like lower tuition, but at the same time they would like things like renovations to the library because, frankly, you can’t have both,’ he said.

SDS recognizes that it may be hard to accomplish both lock-in tuition and upgrade facilities, but with a reallocation of funds, SDS believes benefits may not have to be entirely eliminated, Hickey said.

At the meeting with Wolfe and Saleh where the petition was presented, SDS was told the university would research other universities’ policies regarding lock-in tuition, Hickey said in an e-mail.

‘They dismissed some of the other things in our petition completely, but we won’t just let them do that,’ he said.

SDS also demanded student representation on the Board of Trustees. Student Association elects two student liaisons to the board, but that person has no power to vote on issues like tuition raises.

The protesters also wanted to place limits on employee salaries, especially those of administrators and the five highest-paid employees who are not administrators. Instead, the money should go to teaching assistants and graduate student faculty with low salaries and few fringe benefits, Hickey said at the protest.

In preparation for its sit-in, SDS also built a ‘snowman army’ Wednesday night in front of Crouse-Hinds Hall, where Cantor’s office is located, to present its demands. NYPIRG built a similar snowman army Feb. 26, on the quad of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to protest cuts to the SUNY budget and TAP aid.

John Crandall, a senior anthropology major who was at the sit-in, said he was hoping the sit-in and petition would show university administrators how many students care about tuition issues.

‘Not many students vote in things like the SA election,’ he said. ‘So if we could surpass that we can demonstrate that this is an issue people care about.’

jdgenco@syr.edu

Published on March 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm