Campaign urges ‘prescription’ to help fix higher ed

By MARY ANN ALBRIGHT
Gazette-Times reporter

Steve Starcevich made a strategic choice when he decided to dress as the Lone Ranger this Halloween.

“He fights for peace and justice on the Western frontier, and we’re here fighting voter apathy,” said Starcevich, an Oregon State University alumnus and volunteer for the Bus Project, a Portland group working to educate voters and increase voter turnout.

Starcevich stopped by the OSU quad Tuesday afternoon to sign a prescription urging whoever is elected governor to be the doctor who cures the state’s ailing higher education system.

Surrounded by a cardboard coffin, gravestones and a giant ballot box, Associated Students of OSU President Mike Olson pointed to the mini-cemetery and urged students passing through the quad to take action.

“Don’t let this happen to OSU. We’re down to bare bones. Prevent the death of higher education,” he said.

Halloween’s macabre tone coincided nicely with a statewide day of action organized by the Oregon Student Association, part of the nonprofit organization’s efforts to mobilize student voters.

“Hopefully it’s a way to get students excited about doing a small part to help higher education in the future. With the disinvestment in higher education in the last 10 or 15 years, we really need the state to invest. We’re really at a breaking point, in terms of access and quality,” said Olson, a senior majoring in biology.

Megan Driver, an OSU sophomore majoring in political science and Spanish, is the Oregon Student Association’s board chairwoman. She’s also ASOSU’s director of state affairs.

Pointing to the gravestones, which marked the death of virtues such as affordable tuition, full-time faculty and student access, Driver said she hoped 4,000 OSU students would sign the prescription Tuesday.

Other Oregon University System institutions and community colleges held a similar event. The Oregon Student Association hoped to collect more than 10,000 signatures total, according to Melissa Unger, executive director.

“Currently, the Oregon University System is in a doomsday scenario. Right now our students are paying more and getting less,” said Driver, noting that a 2005 report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers ranked Oregon 46th in the nation when it comes to state support for higher education.

Since 1991, Oregon’s higher education system has seen the largest decline in state support in the nation, and the fifth-largest tuition increase, Unger said.

The Oregon Student Association’s prescription asks the newly elected governor to give higher education $188 million more in the 2007-09 budget than in the current biennium, for a total of about $920 million.

They’re also asking for $101 million above the current budget for community colleges.

“We’ll present the signed prescriptions to the newly elected governor in November before he sets his budget,” Driver said.

Tuesday’s event was just one of many “Get Out the Vote” programs sponsored by ASOSU and the Oregon Student Association. Other offerings included presentations on ballot measures and telephone calls reminding people to vote.

Statewide, the association, in conjunction with the Student Vote Coalition, has registered 21,850 students to vote this year, Unger said.

At a glance

Oregon State University has an official Benton County ballot dropsite in the Valley Library, 201 S.W. Waldo Place. Ballots must be received by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.