EDINBORO — Danielle Stone sent a postcard to Pennsylvania’s governor Tuesday — but the note wasn’t very cordial.

“I just put my blunt opinion,” the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania freshman said after adding her signature to a petition and penning a piece of her mind. “I said I think it’s outrageous there are (more) budget cuts” to higher education funding proposed in Gov. Tom Corbett’s current state budget plan.

Paying for college “is expensive enough,” Stone added — not to mention that, even with a degree, “it’s hard enough to find a job as it is” these days.

To help cover her living expenses during the academic year, the business administration major from Pittsburgh said she spends her summers working full-time for a big-box retail chain. “I work my butt off all summer long to afford what I have” by way of expendable income, Stone said.

And to help cover the costs of full tuition, room and board at the university, Stone said she relies on right around $19,000 in financial aid, about half of which is state-funded.

Edinboro University saw funding cuts of 18 percent under the state budget passed earlier in the current fiscal year, which begins each July. Last week, Corbett released a budget plan that proposes another 20 percent cut in funding for it and the 13 other state-owned Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education universities. That means if the proposed budget passes, the state’s total cuts to higher education would amount to a two-year total of 43 percent, putting current funding for PASSHE below 1989-90 levels.

And if those cuts were to start affecting the relative affordability of Edinboro and other state schools, “I probably wouldn’t be able to come” back for the 2012-13 academic year, said Stone, which could certainly leave her hopes for a future as the administrator of a business more up in the air.

“We don’t need more unemployed, uneducated people (just) because people can’t afford to come to college,” said Stone’s friend and fellow EUP freshman Kayla Staus of Pittsburgh. “It’s ridiculous.”



Mountain of notes

Staus said she also shared that sentiment with the governor’s office in the postcard she wrote on Tuesday. Their postcards — as well as undetermined thousands of others from students and faculty across the state system — are being mailed there together along with stacks of related petitions following on-campus events being sponsored by the Association of Pennsylvania State College Universities and Faculties. EUP chapter members of the faculty and coaches’ union spent about six hours Tuesday passing out information, providing postcards and collecting signatures at tables at the university’s Pogue Student Center and Baron-Forness Library, and said additional events may be planned as state budget discussions continue in coming days and weeks.

The goal of faculty and staff in that effort is to raise awareness “that for the second year in a row, we’re getting hit with a (proposed) double-digit budget cut,” said Peter McLaughlin, a professor in the university’s psychology department. If that happens, he said, “it’s going to make it harder for students who are already having a tough time trying to (afford) an education.”

University Interim President Dr. Jim Moran recently told the Tribune it’s too early to tell precisely how EUP and its students would be directly affected by currently-proposed funding cuts.

Wherever the cuts would be applied and with already-leaner working budgets following earlier belt-tightening, however, they “won’t go unnoticed,” said library faculty member Anthony McMullen.

Within that department, “we’re already talking about things we can cut” to stay within current budget constraints, he said, and “it’s going to be highly uncomfortable” if further cuts need to be made.

“These aren’t services that people won’t miss,” he said. “They will miss them.”



Ryan Smith can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at rsmith@meadvilletribune.com.