<p>What up with this? I just received an email which I will post below:</p>
<hr>
<p>Dear Grant Recipient,</p>
<p>Over 252,000 California students like you are currently receiving funds from Cal Grants. At UCLA, approximately 7,000
students receive Cal Grant Funding annually totally $46 million dollars. Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger
submitted a new proposed budget that would make a number of spending cuts, including a phased elimination of the
Cal Grant program. Students who are currently receiving Cal Grants would continue to have their awards renewed as
long as they are eligible. However, all new awards for the 2009-10 year, approximately 116,200 new awards, would be
cancelled. Over the next few years, all Cal Grants would be eliminated. </p>
<p>The Joint Legislative Budget Committee will be holding hearings on cuts to education this week and deliberating this
serious matter, and it is important they hear your voice on this very critical issue which affects college access and
your continued enrollment. YOUR HELP IS NEEDED IMMEDIATELY! Please contact the members of the Joint
Legislative Budget Committee by email or by fax using the contact information provided below. Additionally, we
strongly encourage you to send this similar communication to your specific Senate and Assembly state
representatives in your home district. Let them know how these cuts will affect you, your younger siblings, and other
California students like you who need Cal Grant assistance to help finance a college education. </p>
<p>To receive updates on this important issue and additional information regarding opportunities for you to become
involved in Bruin Advocacy, go to UCLA</a> Government and Community Relations. YOUR VOICE IS IMPORTANT. Below you will find four
attachments regarding specific ways you can help. Thank you for your important contribution in opposing these
proposed cuts.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Ronald W. Johnson
Director of Financial Aid
UCLA</p>
<hr>
<p>If the Cal Grants indeed become eliminated, then that really really sucks for many of us. I think they should have told us about this before we made our decision to come to UCLA. I'm out of state and I seriously need the money they gave me in order to attend.</p>
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<p>understandable i guess since you are out of state and would probably not follow anything about california, even though you plan on attending school there. newspapers have been reporting (even non-californian newspapers, and its been top news on yahoo news as well as google news) that california is in economic crisis mode now. canceling cal grants has been a fairly recent decision in light of attempting to close the CA state budget gap after voters resoundingly rejected a series of propositions to try to alleviate some of the cuts (i think they deserved to have been rejected for reasons i will not go into)</p>
<p>Yeah UCLA emailed me about it too.
I sent emails to all the appropriate state Senators and Assemblymen and I suggest you and everyone else who wants to save Cal Grants to do likewise.</p>
<p>Thank God the Democrats hold a majority in the state legislature, that’ll help. (I don’t mean to get political, i’m not even a democrat, it’s just that for this specific topic, democrats are generally more supportive of social welfare things like government scholarships and whatnot.)</p>
<p>I don’t live in California though so I don’t think my assemblymen will do anything.</p>
<p>Even if you’re out-of-state, you might want to send notes to Karen Bass, Speaker of the Assembly, and Darrell Steinberg, President Pro-Tempore of the Senate, if such an elimination will affect you.</p>
<p>FYI guys, if Calgrants get eliminated, Financial Aid will backfill the packages of students who would be receiving them with money from the normal financial aid pool - so this affects everyone receiving grant or scholarship aid, even if you’re not receiving a Calgrant.</p>
<p>So, this sucks, call your assemblyman.</p>
<p>I’m personally not receiving cal grants, but it would really suck if they took them away from the people who need them. Does anyone know the chances of this actually happening?</p>
<p>If you’re here in California, you might have noticed some ads urging the state not to cut in-home healthcare services that it supports. In the end, at the bottom of the screen, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is identified as having paid for it. They can afford to run those ads and may make headway in Sacramento thanks to their lobbying.</p>
<p>Why do I bring this example up? Well, I think it demonstrates something important. I would imagine that unions representing teachers and professors are opposed to education cuts, certainly, but they are likely more concerned about cash paid out directly to their schools or universities rather than grant aid. If aid is cut, they probably assume that students will still wish to go to college (to most, college is seen as less of a cost and more of an investment - it has rather inelastic demand) and will seek out other sources of scholarships/grants or more federal loans if necessary to pay for it. But if the state cuts money paid directly to educational districts and institutions, there really isn’t an alternative way to recuperate that money. They can’t take out a jumbo PLUS loan from the federal government to cover their operating costs. </p>
<p>If there was a large and powerful student union, this scenario would be different. But there isn’t. Students don’t have money to run lots of television ads or pay for dinners with politicians. I always thought that the state would be able to avoid cutting essentials like aid to students, but with an even deeper recession here than the nation as a whole and the failure of the ballot measures last month, everything is on the table. There simply isn’t any money to pay for it. Unlike the feds, we can not just borrow our way out. Our credit rating is already too low!</p>