Warming up for the fight ahead, students rallied April 8 and are making plans and raising funds to go to Sacramento to protest cuts proposed to the California State University system.
Almost 500 audience members sat and another hundred stood to listen to staff, faculty, administrators and students ask for help protecting the CSU budget.
"We share our dreams, and on occasion we are called upon to fight together," said President Paul Zingg.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts $313 million from the CSU budget, California is facing a deficit of more than $14 billion and almost every state program is facing a 10 percent cut, said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs of the state department of finance.
California's deadline for a budget is July 1, but it could be fall before the governor signs a budget. CSU supporters aren't waiting to take action.
The California State Students Association's annual conference Friday to Monday, will have workshops on opposing the budget, said Esmeralda Campos, Associated Students director of legislative affairs.
Members of the association are also going to march with students from the University of California system and community colleges April 21, she said.
One student planning to attend is junior Jesse Eller. As an elected state officer for California FFA, Eller knows the Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura and hopes to ask Kawamura for help opposing the cuts, he said.
Eller knows students who struggle to get into the classes they need to graduate, he said. He plans to tell legislators the budget cuts could make it even harder.
"Who knows what the extreme result of that is?" he said. "One semester (longer)? Two semesters?"
A.S. will pay the $100 conference registration fee for 10 students, Campos said. The organization is also getting a bus to take 50 students to the march.
Senior Dave Tittle, a liberal arts major, can't make it to the march because of classes, he said. But he's still helping.
He grabbed forms on ways to volunteer, such as writing letters to their legislators. He is having his roommates fill them out and also sent one to his father, a Chico State alumnus.
To save costs, the system cut enrollment by 10,000 students, about the size of Cal State Stanislaus, said Pat Gantt, president of the CSU Employees Union, at the rally.
"I'm willing to do a lot," Tittle said. "I might have been one of those 10,000 if I had been applying to college now."
Ellen Walrath can be reached at ewalrath@theorion.com
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