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Students Rally at Governor's MAP Town Hall
Elmhurst College students joined 250 educators, politicians, and college students protesting the cutoff of Illinois state MAP funding during a rousing rally at Gov. Pat Quinn's Town Hall meeting Tuesday in Chicago.
Students from several public universities, private colleges, and community colleges spoke passionately about the personal hardships they will endure—including for many, giving up the dream of a college education—if the state goes through with its planned budget trims in the Monetary Award Program, or MAP. The grant program funds nearly 138,000 students every year across the state.
Anthony Palumbo, 23, a junior at Elmhurst College and president of the Illinois Education Association Student Program for aspiring teachers, took the podium at the University of Illinois' Chicago campus and told the governor, "We are aware of your support. We are relying on you to find the funds to support the (MAP) program."
Gov. Quinn convened the rally after students and educators across Illinois have launched a campaign to protest the trimming of $200 million from the MAP program this summer.
Quinn promised the rally he would work diligently to find a revenue source to restore the $200 million, which amounts to all MAP grants students' need for Spring Term. Quinn called on Democratic and Republican lawmakers to work with him to find new sources of revenue to restore the money by the end of the Legislative session in Springfield this month.
"I believe in this cause. I know everyone here believes in this cause, and we must come up with a solution," Quinn said. He proposed three possible sources of revenue: raising the state income tax, raising the cigarette taxes, or eliminating loopholes in the corporate income tax.
But this is not a done deal, and several legislators at the rally said they still do not know if there are enough Democratic and Republican votes to pass a measure to restore the funding in the fall Veto Session which starts Oct. 14.
Two Elmhurst College juniors who attended the rally met the governor and spoke with him afterwards.
Rachel Hartman, 20, from Collinsville, Ill., told Quinn about her father, who is with the National Guard doing nation building work in Afghanistan. Hartman, who is majoring in communications and political science, said her family has three children in college and a fourth hoping to go one day. A cutoff in MAP assistance would be devastating for them, said Hartman, noting she would be forced to take out more loans and it would be a huge setback for her career plans.
Liz McAllister, 20, who lives in Wyandotte, Mich., and is coordinating the Student Government Association's efforts to restore MAP funding, also spoke with Quinn and after the rally obtained a proclamation for student government leaders across the state that they plan to present at a protest rally Oct. 11 at Bradley University in Peoria.
"The governor was good at making us feel he actually cared about the issue," said McAllister, who is vice president of Student Services for SGA and is majoring in interdisciplinary communications and marketing.
More than 800 Elmhurst students stand to lose their funding for the Spring Term if MAP funding is not restored. President S. Alan Ray has called on students, their families, faculty, staff, and trustees of the College to write letters and e-mails, or make calls and visits, to their state representatives and state senators to protest the cutoff of MAP funding.
Students and others can locate their representatives at the Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges & Universities web site: www.federationedu.org through the CapWiz tool. Additional information on the MAP funding crisis is available on the Federation site.
Students should drive home the urgency of the matter in the next several weeks before the General Assembly reconvenes on Oct. 14. After meeting with a group of college presidents earlier this month, Quinn has said he will ask the Legislature to raise the state cigarette tax by $1 in order to make up the shortfall. But Tuesday he proposed more possible sources of revenue.
The MAP cuts come at a particularly painful time, since many families have been stung by the recession. Nearly half of the MAP recipients have an annual family income of less than $20,000, according to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. The program awards an average of nearly $5,000 a year, covering the two terms.
The cuts may push students to take on more expensive and less-regulated loans if they already have taken out the maximum amount in federal Stafford loans. Some will register for fewer classes, delaying graduation, and others could be forced to take a term off or drop out.
