Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part series on higher education funding. Part one deals with the students’ role in the funding process.

Student leaders urge other students to become more active in their roles as lobbyists and voters to show the Illinois legislature their concerns about higher education.

NIU Student Association President Jim Fischer said students need to become more organized in their attempts to effectively lobby for higher education.

“Basically, this state, from my point of view, has the constitutional goal of providing an educational opportunity to its citizens. The state is not doing that. If the students want the situation to change, they will have to take it in their own hands,” Fischer said.

Brian Hopkins, Sangamon State University student regent, said students have not had a strong voice in higher education policy since the mid-1970s. “In the early ‘70s, students had a strong, powerful voice in higher education and their input was taken seriously.”

Hopkins said students are attempting to make their voice stronger to the state legislature. He said, “The state legislature gets away with budget cuts and tuition increases because students complain the least. We have to change that. We have to get together and say that’s enough. There are about 300,000 students who are fed up and want a better education.”

Rep. John Countryman, R-DeKalb, said students should voice their concerns about NIU to their state representatives in their hometowns. “I told (Nick) Valadez and Fischer to carry the message to all legislators. We need to get the (students’) message across the state,” he said.

Countryman said students tell him about the problems at NIU, but they need to tell other representatives about them also. He said there are not enough Illinois legislators who are working to help higher education.

Sen. Patrick Welch, D-Peru, said students should be active in the elections, instead of only when an issue comes up. The statewide Day of Action, Oct. 21, 1987, “was six months too late. Students should get involved before the issues come up, not afterward,” he said.

Welch said very few people in DeKalb came out to vote in the last election. He said when the Day of Action took place, he was not very enthusiastic about it because students did not vote for the issue before.

“It’s difficult in Springfield to find a lot of people who are willing to stand up for higher education, but there are a lot who will stand up for elementary and secondary education,” Welch said. The representatives of the teachers’ unions lobby more intensely for elementary and secondary education, he said.

Welch said students’ letters to their state representatives and senators would be more effective if they included a copy of their voter’s registration card, to prove they are voters in that legislator’s district.

To make their voice heard by the legislature, student leaders are planning a second Day of Action to get more students involved in the fight for a tax increase. Fischer said, “Hopefully, we will have more time to organize, educate and make people more aware of the situation. A lot of students are going to have to be active.”

Fischer said the tentative date for Day of Action II is April 13. He also said he hopes more students will go to Springfield to lobby the legislature. “If higher education is not organized, the legislature will hear only from the other strong lobbying groups,” Fischer said.

Another plan to influence the legislature is a “State of the State Address” by the Illinois Student Association Feb. 10, Fischer said. Students, faculty and staff representatives from each university system in the state will present their views of the state of the state, he said.

Hopkins said the students’ address will express the concerns students have about the overall budgetary effects on the universities.

Thursday: The administrators’ views about higher education funding.