Welcome back to the PHENOM Update, our monthly newsletter! We are pleased to announce that we and the UMass SGA are co-hosting an event with state legislators passionate about fighting the student debt crisis titled “Student Voices, Policy Choices”!
This will include senators Jamie Eldridge (the senate’s Debt-Free Future Act sponsor), Jo Comerford (sponsor of the CHERISH ACT), as well as state representatives Lindsay Sabadosa, Danillo Sena and PHENOM alum Natalie Higgins (also the House’s Debt-Free Future Act sponsor). The event will take place on the UMass Amherst campus in the Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union on September 17th, from 12-1:30 PM.
The forum will be a chance to hear about the work these esteemed legislators do, how the student debt crisis has affected them and their communities, and how we can win debt-free higher education in the Commonwealth! It will also be a great way to meet other students and citizens passionate about politics and the fight against the student debt crisis!
Please come with any questions or ideas of your own to propose during the Q&A discussion. Food and drinks will be available!
Stay in the loop and follow us on Instagram!
As we work to rally students and faculty across the state to fight for more affordable, fairer higher education, social media is the go-to way to keep our allies and communities up to date. Check out our official statewide Instagram page @massphenom, as well as our chapter pages @umassaphenom and @dartmouth_phenom!
Write your legislators to support our causes!
Fortunately, our letter campaigns via Action Network make it easy for anyone interested to help our causes! With the option of sending a pre-written letter included or writing your own, simply put your name, street address, city and zip code and fire away!
This form of advocacy is an essential stepping stone towards bigger victories by both spreading awareness about the legislation among citizens and by making politicians more open to considering it.
Here are some of our main letter campaigns:
- protecting funding for community colleges (to ensure community colleges can handle all of the new students coming in now that Massachusetts just made them tuition-free!)
- passing the Debt-Free Future Act (to make all public colleges tuition-free)
- passing the Endowment Tax Act (to tax Mass’s richest private colleges in order to fund said tuition-free public college).
In Other News
A more inclusive Common App?
In an effort to increase college access to underprivileged yet promising students, the Common App has been allowing universities to accept already academically qualified students just based on their transcripts. UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth and UMass Lowell already do this, for example.
Given the growing complexity of the college admissions process, not to mention the additional obstacles for lower-income students such as jobs and family duties, it will be interesting to see how this change may improve college access for tens of thousands of students in Massachusetts.
It’s a bit reminiscent of the University of Texas policy that guarantees the top six percent of all graduating high school classes automatic admission, which has ensured more and more underrepresented groups have a chance at a quality public education.
The little-known crisis threatening to suffocate our public universities
According to a recent report, the UMass system alone faces a backlog of $4.8 billion in needed maintenance of its campus buildings and infrastructure, which is almost five times greater than the system’s entire endowment.
Without properly maintained campuses, Massachusetts is putting in jeopardy not only the quality of students’ education but also the health and safety of everyone involved, from staff to local residents.
Unsurprisingly, this crisis has its roots in the state continually cutting the funding that’s essential to support necessary renovations. As the state government has left our public institutions out to dry, they have been forced to either delay renovations or rely more and more on debt to expand and maintain their campuses and stay competitive.
The amount of debt these colleges have taken on has become its own problem: not only has it contributed to rising tuition, it has seemingly made them less able to continue maintenance in the long term.