By Staff Editorial
Never-ending budget story (Allison Perez / Photo Editor)
By Staff Editorial
The spring semester has started for each community college in California, but instead of looking forward to a great start to the semester, each community college is feeling the low blow hit to the stomach, after hearing that there will be an additional $149 million cut during the 2011-12 academic year.
Since 2008, the 112 community colleges in California have cut $809 million, and with this new cut added to the current academic year, community colleges are unsure where more cuts can come from.
Eliminating the winter session or even the summer session are options to cut, but many community colleges are trying their best to keep classes available and with the demand for more cuts, the challenge is getting difficult for everyone.
The California government has failed to show its support for higher education, from the Assembly to the Senate and to Gov. Jerry Brown, no one in Sacramento is trying to help save higher education.
As much as every Californian is being affected by the state budget cuts, the idea for the California government should be to find ways to avoid making cuts to higher education, because in order to have future generations run the country, states and businesses, education is needed.
Unemployment is still high and many Californians are heading back to college to find new careers, but without a job or education, the chance to earn a living is so impossible there is nothing anyone can do to survive on his or her own.
California has done a lot of cuts that have affected natural resources, environment protection, health and human services, corrections and rehabilitations, K-12 education, higher education and other, releasing inmates from prisons and funding to hospitals and fire stations.
This is a crucial point in California and each group from education to resources, they are each asking the question, why is the state cutting from their funds?
California needs to organize its priorities and understand that K-12 and higher education are the most important groups that should avoid heavy cuts, because education should not be taken from everyone.
With cuts to the education groups, it limits what each school can do for its students and faculty.
At Riverside City College, students are looking at the faculty for answers as to why there are hard-impacting cuts, while the faculty is asking the administration why the cuts are affecting the students.
As much as everyone wants to blame someone else for what the state has done to community colleges, there is no one to blame but the politicians in Sacramento, who are making these life-changing decisions for students.
The four-year universities of California are now protesting in Sacramento and are voicing their opinions to the cuts and increase of tuition to the ones at the capital.
Community college students need to do the same.
Students at RCC need to organize themselves as one and communicate and work with other community colleges nearby and across the state and stand up like the students at four-year universities are doing in Sacramento right now.
The time is now, and the call is out to take action.
