Penn State students rally for reduction of state education cuts

Penn State students rally for reduction of state education cuts


Penn State Altoona sophomore Kimberly Isaac likes it here and has gotten "the hang" of her print journalism major.
But her parents in Queens, N.Y., are struggling with the responsibility to pay her $30,000 a year college costs, even as they pay off her big sister's Penn State loans. So Isaac fears the big tuition hike that must follow if the state follows through on Gov. Tom Corbett's proposed 50 percent cut in higher education funding.
Isaac was among 75 Altoona College students - 500 altogether from Penn State - at the university's annual Capitol Day rally Tuesday in Harrisburg, urging lawmakers to back off the radical cuts.
"It would be a big step" - one she'd be reluctant to take - if she had to go to a smaller school closer to home, Isaac said after the rally.
Her parents are willing to do more, "but there's only so much they can do," she said.
"Everybody fears the worst," said Paige Blawas of Latrobe, president of the Altoona Student Government Association.
Blawas worries she'll need a serious job to supplement the minimal one she now holds during the school year, and that extra effort might diminish her college experience and even her grades.
Her family is middle class, not "well-off" - as one speaker she heard Tuesday presumed to label most of the students, she said.
Her dad has a small business installing stair lifts, her mom helps him part-time and her brother is starting college in the fall.
And the family income isn't guaranteed: "It's all about sales," she said. "And if [my dad] has a bad month."
Ben Clark, SGA vice president, worries that friends may need to leave Penn State or that he'll find at reunions 20 years from now they're still paying off student loans.
He also wonders about increasing numbers of students in his classes due to faculty cuts and even the possibility of closures of outreach campuses, a possibility university officials are examining.
It would seem that Altoona should be safe, being large and close to University Park, making it an easy transition for juniors to the main campus, he said.
But that very proximity might make it easier to close, because this area of the state is already served by the main campus, and because closing a large satellite campus would lop a large part of the overall costs all at once, he conceded.
Still, the situation may not be as dire as it seems, Blawas said, after speaking to aides of state Sen. Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland.
"They said a lot that was reassuring," Blawas said. "They made it seem as though it wouldn't be as big a cut as expected."
Likewise, Clark was pleasantly surprised.
He went expecting to feel alienated, with non-receptive lawmakers.
Instead, he found them "engaging," and hoping to work out something that would "not hit [us] as hard as originally proposed."
It probably helped that his father, Dan, was a state representative for Juniata, Mifflin, Snyder and Perry counties from 1988 to 2002.
Clark talked with state Reps. Rick Geist, R-Altoona, and Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, the latter of which he'd known as a child, through his father.
Clark and the others he encountered Tuesday are "good kids," Geist said.
As for the students' hopes of a smaller cut, "the budget is far from being done," he said.
He thinks Corbett's $27.3 billion total "will hold," but that the items within that budget are "a moving target."
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.