Opinion: Why I Campaign for College Tuition Relief Now!

By Vicente Garcia, March 24, 2008

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As 2007 marked the first time California spent more money on prisons than public colleges, young activists mobilize for a ballot initiative that will help low-income students access universities.

After many attempts by Californians to fight back against fee hikes in higher education, the Tuition Relief Now! campaign came about when the Greenlining Institute decided to author a ballot initiative using a new strategy -- it is the first ever all student-led campaign in California, and there are no paid petition-gatherers.

This campaign has deep meaning for me and my community, and I wanted to share my insights on how it fits into the broader issue of Educational Justice.

What Connects My Community to a Struggle for Educational Justice?

If it wasn't for the sacrifices and resistance within my Chicano family and the additional 515 years' history of my people resisting colonization, I wouldn't be a college student. And, if it wasn't for the education of my Ethnic Studies classes at an affordable state college, and other lessons I have learned from community organizing, I never would have realized the roots of my resistance.

Now I do. And in order to keep that cycle of resistance going, I know that higher education needs to be public, affordable, and accessible to everyone. And just as importantly, we need to change the colonial methodologies of our educational institutions. Most U.S. colleges still promote a curriculum that validates the knowledge, ways of thinking, economic organization, and histories of a select group of people while delegitimizing the experiences of countless others.

Now, I could spend a whole book on "decolonizing the academy," but the focus of this article is on access to higher education. With that in mind, what is the political environment that created college fee hikes in the first place?

Propositions 13 and 218: Cutting Taxes and Social Services

It all began with Proposition 13 (1978) and Proposition 218 (1996), which protected working-class residential owners from paying large property taxes, but it also prevented the state of California from collecting taxes on commercial real estate from private companies who can afford to do so.

In 1996, the California began deregulation of its energy markets which allowed the state's energy utility companies -- such as Enron -- to sell off power production to unregulated private corporations. The resulting market manipulations and financial fraud created the Enron Scandal in 2001, and the state went into a 23.6 billion dollar debt hole by 2003.

By no coincidence, 2003 also marks the year of massive cuts to social services and community college fees that went from $11 to $18 dollars per unit. As author Angela Davis observed, cutting social services pushes poor people, who often in this country are also people of color, off the social mobility ladder into homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy.

On April 16, 2007, the California legislature passed AB900 -- without any public hearings or input -- authorizing the state to spend $7.4 billion to build 40,000 more prison and jail cells. This marked the first time in California's history when the state would spend more on incarcerating inmates than educating students in its public colleges.

For our current 2008-2009 budget, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed that the 'fair' way to balance the budget is for all departments to face cuts. The prison budget, however, is slated for a 1.7 percent increase.

University Administrators Over Students and Faculty

Despite budget shortages, the executive salaries at California State University (CSU) campuses increased by more than 15 percent in the past 10 years.

Much of this is caused by weak shared governance at state universities. Shared governance is the idea that both faculty and administrators should have the responsibility of making final decisions on key policy issues within a university. To this day, the UC and CSU systems only have a shell of a shared governance structure -- administrators still have the final say on most policies. (PDF)

Institutionalized Racism in Education

In 1996, Proposition 209 eliminated race-conscious policies at state universities. Since then, the universities have implemented other measures to encourage enrollment of people of color, but the overall numbers still remain below pre-209 prop. statistics. (PDF)

Complicating recruitment of young people of color into state universities even more, 43 percent of black and Latino students attend high schools where their ethnic group is the majority. These students are less likely to have college counselors, more likely to have military recruiters, more likely to attend a lower-performing school, and less likely to pass high school exit exams. Given these disparities, they are even less likely to meet the basic eligibility requirements to get admitted to the CSU or UC systems in the first place.

Barriers to Direct Action

On March 17, 2003, Sacramento saw the largest gathering of student protestors in California's history. The resistance was initially successful; instead of raising the tuition from $11 to $24 for community colleges, fees went from $11 to $18. Despite all this, when Gov. Schwarzenegger came into office the next year, the fees jumped from $18 dollars to $26.

In 2004, Gov. Schwarzenegger and university officials of the UC and CSU systems signed a Compact on Higher Education (PDF), which mandated cutting base public funding for higher education. It also required both UC and CSU to impose large and rapid tuition increases as a permanent source of generating operating revenues, and committed our universities to "seek additional private resources and maximize other fund sources available to the University to support basic programs."

Tuition Relief Now! Represents Something Different

Despite several student-won victories, not a single year has gone by without fee hikes in public universities. If the Tuition Relief Now! initiative passes, it could win a tuition freeze, opening up the door to larger student demands in the future.

I think the campaign will give us a shot at reclaiming our power as students. It bypasses privatization by placing a 1 percent tax on millionaires, redistributing a miniscule amount of their earnings into the hands of the public good. It will create estimated revenue of over 2 billion dollars, according to the California Legislative Analyst's Office. With that kind of money, we can steer more people away from "behind bars," and toward "behind desks." It would create an accountability panel under control of local communities and students, not just a few wealthy university administrators. By freezing tuition, the initiative enables working-class students and people of color to stay in school.

For our campaign to be successful, we need the support of every single California registered voter. So, next time you see one of our petitioners out on the street, approach them with pen in hand and these brief political thoughts of a radical queer Xican@ in your heart.

To volunteer or learn more about the Tuition Relief Now! initiative, visit: TuitionReliefNow.org.

Vicente Garcia is a student at San Francisco State University and a volunteer organizer at the Tuition Relief Now! campaign.