[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Dina Cervantes
Chair
California State Student Association

The leadership of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC), California State Student Association (CSSA) and University of California Student Association (UCSA) have come together in a historic coalition, called Students for California’s Future and announced that Monday, April 21, 2008 will be a Day of Action across California with major marches being planned at the State Capitol and downtown Los Angeles.

Over 3.2 million students at the California Community Colleges (CCC), California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems are represented with the unification of these organizations because all would be adversely affected by $1 billion dollars in cuts to higher education.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

As I was about to write an article about yesterday’s events in Sacramento, I decided to first complete my news and opinion digest for the monring. In this morning’s LA Times, I ran across an article, that caused me to keep saying to myself, “Tell me this isn’t true. It can’t be.”

Take a moment to read the Times article: “Cal State moves up application deadlines: Officials hope students will miss deadlines, easing the effect of budget cutbacks.”

Is this what the great state of California is coming to? I thought, apparently naively, that we celebrated and cherished the desire of our young wanting to further their education and attend institutions of higher learning. Instead, because of the budget proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger for next year, and difficulties the California State University (CSU) system expects to have with cut backs, they are, with premeditation (but propbably without malice aforethought) advancing the deadline for applying and hoping that many students miss the deadline.