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October 21, 2009
By Andrew Mitchell
Copy Editor
Photo by Andrew Mitchell |
The rallying cry to reinstate funding for the Monetary Award Program, the higher education financial program also known as MAP, came to a climax Thursday as hundreds of students descended on the Capitol, holding up signs and shouting, “We need MAP!”
Their shouts were not ignored; later that day the Illinois Legislature passed an appropriation of $205 million to fund MAP grants for the spring semester, providing money for about 138,000 students, including 827 at UIS.
But questions remain about how the state will pay for grants. Lawmakers have given no word as to where the $205 million will come from, and reports show the state’s deficit in the billions.
For Student Government Association Members Derek Felix and Jaime Casinova, the rally of students from colleges and universities all over Illinois satisfied them in a very big way.
“It’s a lot bigger turnout than I
expected,” said Felix in the Capitol,
while other students waved
home made signs inside and out.
Casinova said even while he
helped organize the statewide
coalition among other colleges,
he didn’t realize he struck a collective
nerve.
“It started out with somebody going, ‘Hey, we’re putting together a bus,’ and I thought, ‘That’s great.’” he said. “Then the same university later said, ‘We’ve got two buses coming for sure.’ We said, ‘Awesome! We’re just happy with a bus.’ Suddenly … there were more universities saying [they had] five buses committed. I mean, committed and paid for … I was just amazed.”
Outside of the Capitol, Governor Pat Quinn joined the students in rallying. Earlier in the week, he traveled to the major state universities to drum up support for the program.
“This was really an inspiring display of demonstration, of grassroots democracy,” he said. “I am really proud of the students of Illinois, and their universities and colleges [and] how they came together, not for profit but for a cause they believe in.”
The stopping of MAP grants would have put a dent in university enrollment, with over 18 percent of the UIS student body receiving grants.
“I think that holds potential to literally invert our enrollment record,” Felix said.
It painted a worse picture for smaller universities. Owen Kerschner, a junior from Knox College in Galesburg, said a more than a 20 percent of Knox students accepted MAP grants, including himself.
“I’ve got a twin brother at UIUC,” he said. “It’s tricky enough [for my parents] sending two kids to college at the same time.”
Concerns still linger
But problems still linger for Illinois’s finances. Even as state leaders almost unanimously agreed to reinstate MAP grants for spring, they acknowledged that they didn’t know how they would pay for it.
Last year, the state hit a record high in budget deficit, over $3 billion. Some critics have balked at Quinn’s approval of a spending program without a clear sense of where the money will come from.
Earlier, Quinn suggested an added tax on cigarettes to pay for MAP. House Republicans proposed a tax amnesty, essentially waiving penalties for late income or sales tax payments.
Quinn did not say whether either or any other revenue source would be used, but said in regards to amnesty, “I’m going to look at that. The basic line is that you can’t use amnesty to get to heaven.”
Regardless, Quinn said that the MAP funding was a matter of setting priorities for the budget, with college educations being high on the list.
Still, some wariness remains. “[We’ll work on this] one day at a time,” Quinn said. “We’ll work on next year when next year comes.”
