Advocate: For yourself and your campus
Educate: The State Legislature and other MSU students
Challenge: The state, our community, and yourself to fight for affordable and accessible education.
MSSA is starting an e-mail brigade to let legislators know that students care about their education. Through this advocacy effort, legislators will pay more attention to students and their wants and needs. Minnesota State Mankato needs students to help them get through to legislators.
[DATE]
Dear [Representative/Senator/Governor]:
I am writing to urge you to support higher education legislation for the entire MnSCU 2004 capital bonding request. I would also ask that you allocate any HESO budget surplus to the public colleges and universities, allow tuition increases only at the level of inflation, and eliminate the dollar-for-dollar reduction of state aid to students who are awarded Pell Grants.
Students, like myself, are becoming worried about the future of higher education. In the past few years, it has become very expensive to attend a public university. Because institutions like MSU, Mankato have not been funded appropriately, I have had to [insert your reason here such as: work an extra job; can’t graduate until ???? because of lack of faculty/classrooms or sufficient financial aid/work study/child care grants]. It is vital to the well-being of our state that the Legislature funds its public higher education institutions and financial aid programs to the levels outlined in state law.
[Sample paragraph 1]
I am a student at MSU, Mankato. [Insert your own personal story about how high tuition rates, little/no access to financial aid, etc. affects you!]
[Sample paragraph 2]
In order to help students like me being able to afford to come to school, I am requesting that you support the elimination of the Higher Education Services Office and allow each of the higher education systems like MnSCU to directly allocate financial aid funds to students. It is also important that you realize that private and proprietary higher education schools make up only 18 percent of all the higher education institutions in our state yet they receive 55 percent of the dollars from the state aid program. Students always have the choice of where they would like to attend school, but if they chose to go to a school that cost more money to attend, the allocation from state aid should be based upon the need of the student, NOT the cost of the institution.
[Sample paragraph 3]
The “Higher Education Asset Preservation and Repair” (HEAPR) tops the MnSCU list each year it’s submitted. Here at MSU Mankato, we have $57 million in deferred maintenance that needs attention. When our institutions are given the dollars they request to deal with HEAPR projects, it winds up costing additional dollars and preventing students from receiving full value for their tuition dollars. We don’t’ have enough classroom space for the number of students who are enrolled in our programs. And many of our academic buildings need better maintenance and repair.
[Sample paragraph 4]
The Trafton design project listed in MnSCU’s request [optional to include the house file or senate file bill number(s)] is an important project for our campus. Over 30 percent of the credit hours generated on the MSU Mankato campus happen at Trafton Hall. We need $2.56 million to begin the design phase for this project.
[Sample paragraph 5]
In recent years, the Legislature has not honored funding 66 percent of the instructional costs for its public higher education institutions. Students like myself now pay half of our own tuition, rather than the one-third of the cost. Because students who attend private and private for-profit colleges are allowed to receive 55 percent of all state aid dollars, fewer low-income students like myself can [barely] afford to attend school without incurring a high amount of loan debt.
[Sample paragraph 6]
Students in Minnesota who are eligible to receive federal Pell Grants and state aid money are the only students in the nation who have those state aid awards reduced, dollar-for-dollar, in the U.S. Please stop this kind of tuition cuts to students who qualify for both types of financial aid by supporting the Pell Pass-Through Initiative.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
How a:
