“We’d have to sacrifice Boston if we wanted to get better club space,” said Kashiem Brown, President of Animated Perspective, of a trip the club usually takes. Brown acknowledged that buying new couches would affect more people. Club leaders were having similar conversations throughout SAC Ballroom A, as only a handful of clubs managed to avoid budget cuts this year.

Although the Stony Brook University clubs receive funding from Student Activity Fees, the USG’s equivalent of taxes, their situations are more similar to private businesses with a large competitor than agencies in a cash-strapped government. While the overall USG budget shrank by $40,000 from last year, funding to the Student Activities Board–which is responsible for holding large events like last May’s Bruno Mars concert–skyrocketed by $137,000.

USG cut the 136 student clubs with line budgets by a combined total of $117,000. The $60,000 missing in the equation returned to clubs and organizations after that amount of last year’s budget was spent on renovating the Student Activity Center Commuter Commons.

Nolan Theodore, an e-board member of the LGBTA, learned that clubs could only apply for Fall revisions–a process by which cut funding is restored–if their budget had decreased by more than 40 percent. The LGBTA’s budget was slashed by 37 percent.

“We have a problem,” Theodore said as his eyes widened, trying to get the attention of another member of the club.

“The LGBTA gives something to the campus no other club can,” said Theodore of the budget cuts. “It’s sad for Stony Brook; we could bring so many great speakers here.”

USG officials spent little time explaining why there was less money for clubs this year. Instead, Treasurer Tom Kirnbauer and Vice President of Student Life Allen Abraham gave a powerpoint on the rules for how clubs could spend their money, of which there were more than ever before, thanks in part to a lawsuit filed against USG last year.

The $2,000 limit per guest speaker drew the most questions and groans from the crowd. Theodore raised his hand to point out that diversity clubs would be hurt the most by the new policies, as SAB spends almost exclusively on mainstream entertainment.

By the end of the slideshow, pointed questions and comments like Theodore’s had replaced the requests for clarification the two USG officials had to field at its start.

“Why doesn’t SAB have to abide by these rules?” asked one attendee.

“Can we reverse that?” asked another after learning about SAB’s budget increases.

But the crowd never became unruly, though it did buzz for a few mintues when Kirnbauer declined to publicly answer questions about SAB’s budget, which was overdrawn by $40,000 the previous year, affecting this year’s club budgets.

When the leadership conference let out close to five hours after it started, most students were frustrated and some angry.

For Joe Imbrogno, Vice President of Chemical Engineers Society, the new bylaws meant more paper work and possibly lost opportunities. “We need to apply for a grant this semester,” said Imbrogno. “Our whole club relies on going to these conferences.”

“After careful review of both the oral and written NYSUNY 2020 proposals made to Governor Andrew Cuomo by Stony Brook University President Samuel Stanley, and of the NYSUNY 2020 bill proposed in the state legislature, I am announcing that I cannot give my full support to the plan as it stands now,” he wrote in the release.

The bill was introduced by Governor Cuomo in the last few weeks, and has the support of the state senate, SUNY officials and university presidents, including Stony Brook president Samuel Stanley. It would grant greater autonomy to the SUNY system’s four university centers at Stony Brook, Albany, Buffalo and Binghamton to set their own tuition rates and enter into public/private partnerships, one of the more controversial provisions. Also included in the governor’s plan is a one-time $35 million challenge grant that each of the four universities can receive to fund specific projects on campus. (Read about Stony Brook’s submitted proposal in Think).

Stony Brook’s plan, which was presented to the Governor and SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher last week, calls for an approximately 8% tuition hike every year for the next five years. Critics of the plan say the proposed increases will unfairly affect students from low-income families, even if a significant percent of the generated revenue goes into scholarship funds, as President Stanley has proposed.

But there’s a measurable, albeit shaky, consensus forming around the idea that some tuition increases are needed to both keep SUNY academically competitive with other public universities and cope with almost half a decade of crippling budget cuts from Albany. The in-state tuition rates that New Yorkers pay is one of the lowest in the country. And even the out-of-state rate for a student from Pennsylvania is lower than what that student would pay for Penn State’s tuition.

Where opinions vary is how to go about raising tuition. Maloof seems to be a part of that consensus, and offered his own plan.

“I would feel more comfortable with tuition rates growing at a slower rate for a longer period of time,” he said, without mentioning specific figures. “This would give families an easier time to manage the expenses their child will incur while still allowing for SUNY campuses to plan sufficiently for the future.”

He also calls for provisions that would guarantee revenue generated from tuition increases remains at the respective universities, a stipulation that Governor Cuomo says he supports but is nonetheless absent from the current bill. And Maloof echoed President Stanley in calling for the state to put an end to four consecutive years of budget cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

The full press release is below.

While it’s true that Cuomo is attempting to alleviate a $10 billion dollar deficit, Assemblyman Englebright called the cuts “a complete turning away from the promise and the premise of the university and the hospital.”

So what happens if the budget passes, and those cuts—or eliminations rather, become a reality?

The two prospective sources of revenue that are receiving the most attention are tuition increases and public/private partnerships. However, it is not likely that tuition will rise this year. Public/private partnerships take a significant amount of time to develop before they generate revenue, according to Assemblyman Steve Englebright. This could mean the elimination of hospital services, lay-offs, program cuts to both the university and the hospital and a reduction in the amount of accepted students.

While stable tuition is desirable for current students, Englebright said in a phone interview that it’s “for better or for worse.” If incremental tuition increases don’t occur during a longer period of time and state support continues to dwindle, future students could face a sudden skyrocket in tuition rates. Though either way, they would pay.

“…Without some form of revenue relief in the form of increased tuition, we cannot hope to maintain the same level of educational quality,” President Stanley wrote in his message to the campus community.

In a recent testimony, SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher called for the creation of a five-year tuition increase plan, one that is supported by the SUNY Student Assembly.

“We feel keeping tuition at the current level is simply not sustainable, and does not support access and affordability in the long-term,” said SUNY Student Assembly President Julie Gondar in a statement on the Assembly’s website.

Gondar also wrote that SUNY students think it unwise that Cuomo didn’t include a tuition increase plan in his proposal. However, the assembly website claims that all representatives are elected by their student peers, which is not true in the case of Stony Brook. And if our representatives are not elected, they do not fairly represent the opinions of the student body.

“These people work very closely with administrators and lawmakers, enjoying access to a political elite that eventually yields lines on a resume and letters of recommendation for the students and the ability to claim the “voice of the students” for the administrators and lawmakers,” said Mike Carley, a founding member of the Radical Student Union, or RSU, a group on campus that works to secure student rights, in an email.

In an effort to take direct action against Governor Cuomo’s proposed cuts to higher education, the RSU has planned a rally to take place March 2 in the SAC plaza.

“The only way for students to have their voices heard is to pressure the government collectively,” Carley wrote. “Individual students acting alone are powerless.”

Deputy Provost Brent Lindquist sat down with student media on November 24 to discuss Project 50 Forward, budget cuts, and the future of his office.

Project 50 Forward, a comprehensive guideline meant to help Stony Brook University navigate it’s immediate future, offers three key initiatives that the administration seeks to reform and improve.

One of those initiatives is “Academic Greatness,” a charge that falls to the Office of the Provost. Unfortunately for Lindquist and Provost Eric Kaler, they must try to make and implement these plans during a struggling economy and repeated cuts to Stony Brook’s state funding.

Despite financial difficulties, Lindquist stated that he would do everything he could to protect faculty and academics, and is turning to a few creative (albeit controversial) solutions.

Most of the approximately $30 million in cuts that the Provost has had to make in the last three years have been on the administrative level. Enough employees have taken retirement packages so that no one has to be let go even while departments are consolidating, says Lindquist.

Trimming excess administrative costs could also be achieved through consolidation. Lindquist said that by combining similar departments, money could be saved on administrative costs without eliminating academics or majors.

But alleviating administrative costs and personnel through retirement packages will only go so far. Retirement packages have not yet been offered to faculty, but Lindquist said it could be possible in the near future.

Students, who have until now largely been shielded by the Provost’s office from baring the brunt of the budget cuts, are going to start seeing changes as well.

Physics professor Thomas Hemmick has piloted a class beginning at 7:00 am, earlier than any other class previously offered at Stony Brook. The class of about 450 students meets in Javitz 100, the university’s largest lecture hall.

While Lindquist couldn’t comment on the future of this program, he confirmed that it is possible that other classes could be available that early in the morning as a strategy to save money by offering more classes in a day.

At the same time, the Provost’s office is starting to operate on a three semester mindset, increasingly looking to summer sessions as a suitable home for classes with low enrollment numbers but are still prerequisites for graduation within certain majors.

“We’re looking at the year as having three semesters,” said Lindquist.

A three semester strategy is better than the alternative, cutting the major all together, argues Lindquist.

“Once academics are cut, they are hard to bring back” he said. “That is why we’re looking to save money in other places.”

In fact, while other SUNY schools like Albany and Geneseo are being forced to cut programs, Stony Brook has added several masters programs such as an M.A. in Marine Conservation and Policy, an area that Stony Brook was previously considered to be weak in.

Compounding the complexity of all of these changes is the fact that Stony Brook will be introducing a new Provost in less than a year. Eric Kaler, who has held the title since 2007, was appointed the 16^th President of the University of Minnesota two weeks ago. His new job starts on July 1, 2011.

The search for a new Provost is not officially underway yet, but it will likely begin soon, according to Lindquist.

“The process normally takes about 7 months, and July is 7 months away,” he said.

Lindquist did not rule out the possibility of hiring from within Stony Brook. For the time being, he will likely assume additional responsibilities while Kaler visits Minnesota to prepare for his presidency.

Physical changes are underway on campus as well. Beginning next semester, the Old Chemistry building will be closed as it undergoes dramatic remodeling. Lindquist described his job over the last year as working to move the six programs that used to be housed in Old Chemistry to make room for the new project.

Three lecture halls that can hold 250 students each will be added on to the building, and the new facility will resemble other new buildings architecturally.

The money being used for the Old Chem remodeling was previously designated for use to address “critical maintenance,” but Vice President of Facilities Barbara Chernow was able to convince the state that it could be used for a building project.

Other new construction includes a student recreation center and a new building in the Research and Development Park. Projects like these are funded by construction bonds that are less dependent on the economy, so money is still plentiful even while the university faces massive budget cuts.

Despite all of the new construction, it is not likely that the enrollment cap of 2700 incoming freshman that was announced earlier this semester will be lifted.

“The cap…is not space related. It’s about how many students we feel we can give a quality education,” said Lindquist.

The cap is necessitated by continuing budget woes, and is a response to what President Stanley called “the failure of the state to adequately fund us.”

“If we can’t increase our revenue per student, we don’t want to add more students,” he explained. “We’ve been growing but we haven’t been adding faculty fast enough. We cant keep doing that, and that’s because the quality of your education is going to suffer.”

New York State is once again passing down huge cuts to each of the 64 campuses in the State University of New York system. Stony Brook has already drafted a budget for the next academic year that presumes a further $10 million in cuts on top of the $59 million that have been cut already over the last two years.

The news follows a disappointing summer for President Stanley and other supporters of the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act, a bill that would have granted greater autonomy to individual SUNY campuses and given them more control over their own tuition costs. PHEEIA was ultimately excluded from the state budget, though ongoing negotiations may yet result in the passage of some of the key provisions.

“We’re profoundly disappointed that at the end the legislature did not adopt any components of the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act,” said Stanley. “But I’m going to continue to push for the elements of PHEEIA.”

As added incentive, former Stony Brook professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Stony Brook Foundation James Simons is holding back a $150 million donation to the university until PHEEIA or some iteration of it is passed. The gift would more than double Stony Brook’s existing endowment, and would constitute the biggest single gift ever given to a SUNY school, far surpassing his own previous record of $60 million.

In the meantime, Stony Brook is turning to new avenues in the hopes of cutting costs. A new initiative called Project 50 Forward has been implemented, and will flush out inefficiencies within the university and its administration. The hope, says President Stanley, is that the implementation of the findings of Project 50 Forward will save the university as much as $30 million annually.

Other cost cutting moves are already underway, though in some cases out of the public eye. Retirement packages are being offered to personnel, and there is a hiring freeze on many positions, as vacancies are left unfilled. On a more superficial level, contracts with landscapers are shrinking, and maintenance work is being cut.

But what really worries President Stanley, and what should cause concern among students, is the impact that cuts may have on academic offerings. Unlike in years past, when academics were shielded as best as possible from most of the penny-pinching moves, there have already been cutbacks on course offerings with more on the way.

Whole departments are even in jeopardy. While no concrete plans exist as of this date, the provost’s office is exploring the possibility of merging several smaller departments into a single larger one to trim administrative costs. The Asian-American Studies department has been listed as one possible casualty.

As for remedies, President Stanley placed some of the responsibility on students.

“It becomes more and more important for [students] to really look at advising and really think carefully about what classes you need to graduate,” he said.

Additionally, Stony Brook is adding summer courses to help students who are shut out of required classes during the fall and spring semesters. This past summer saw the largest enrollment numbers ever for summer session.

Also discussed at the presser was the Southampton situation. A recent court decision found that Stony Brook had violated state law by closing most of the operations at the Shinnecock Hills campus and relocated about 85% of its students to the main campus. The plaintiffs in the case, six Stony Brook Southampton students, have filed a judgment proposal that, if accepted by the judge, would force Stony Brook to reopen the campus by the Spring 2011 semester. Stony Brook University has until September 17 to file its own proposal. When asked to comment on the case, President Stanley had little to say other than that the university “will be submitting a response to the court.”

But what’s happening at Southampton right now is also the necessary evil that comes when the state dramatically reduces funding for the school. Given the current budgetary conditions that Stony Brook, and all of SUNY, is facing, it is infeasible to think that they can continue running the campus at Southampton and educating the more than 25,000 students at the main campus of Stony Brook.

We would agree with President Stanley on this, but his Southampton opponents question his motives in doing this. According to an April 14 article in The East Hampton Star:

“Mr. Thiele and Mr. LaValle have said that the move to close the Southampton campus, which has been supported by the state university system’s chancellor, Nancy L. Zimpher, is part of a political effort to support the Public Higher Education Innovation and Empowerment Act. It would, among other things, allow the university system to charge different tuition rates for different programs and at different campuses.”

LaValle and Thiele aren’t really trustable, and we didn’t have time to follow up on this with Stanley. Regardless, Stanley’s firm insistence that PHEEIA is the way to make up for SUNY’s budget shortfalls is the wrong sort of thinking that does not need to be reinforced with legislators.

This crisis is indicative of more than a failure of Stony Brook’s administration; it’s a failure on the state’s legislators and governor. Senator LaValle, Assemblyman Thiele and the rest of New York’s legislators were responsible for this when they allowed the tens of millions in cuts to Stony Brook over the last two years. We’re seeing for the first time—and probably not the last—a clash of actions and desire. LaValle and Thiele want to drastically cut funding for SUNY (or not to reverse it) and to keep their constituents happy.

One thing is for certain, though; Stony Brook and the rest of SUNY need more money than they’re getting. If the crisis at Southampton shows legislators anything, it should be that they need to restore the years of slashed funding to SUNY’s budget, they need to make the education of New York’s citizens a higher priority and they need to stop pushing the burden for driving New York’s economy onto the students.

The Famous Windmill at Stony Brook Southampton

Additional reporting by Katie Watt

Facing yet another round of state budget cuts, Stony Brook University took the drastic step of announcing that by summer’s end, the Stony Brook Southampton campus would no longer operate as a semi-independent college, leaving the school’s 500 students to find a new university by the fall.

“Everything will continue until August 31,” said University President Samuel Stanley. “But after that time, this won’t be a residential campus any further.”

The news was met with anger, sadness and frustration from the campus community, a close-knit group of students and faculty. Students were given no notice of the university’s decision until an article was published on the hyper local online news site 27east.com the night before the official announcement. President Stanley began his remarks by apologizing for the way the campus found out about the news, saying that it was the intention of the administration to make the announcement themselves on Thursday.

That did little to quiet students though. Many in the audience demanded to know why the decision-making process was kept a secret. The administration has been aware of the budget cuts for many months, and the discussions about possible cuts at Southampton had been ongoing for weeks.

“It just happened so quickly, I really don’t know how I was supposed to react,” said Elliott Kurtz, a freshman at Southampton.

“I found out about this at 9 o clock last night. I thought it was a joke,” said Amanda Sylvester, a sophomore. “We were never asked. We were never given the opportunity to try and change this.”

The effective closure of the 81-acre campus will save an estimated $6.7 million per year, or approximately 20% of the total amount of the most recent cuts to Stony Brook, according to Stanley. Administration officials also made it clear that Southampton cuts were a last resort, having already trimmed the budget elsewhere. The main campus has endured numerous cuts since the current state budget crisis began in 2008, and the Manhattan campus was cut in half as well, from two floors to one.

None of this was any comfort to students, who charged that the salaries of the administrators on the stage could make a serious dent in the $6.7 million needed annually to keep Southampton open. President Stanley alone makes $650,000 a year, and the combined salaries of those on stage totaled over $1.4 million based on 2008 figures.

There was also animosity over the number of visits paid to Southampton by President Stanley. He estimated that he had made the hour-long trip between three and five times since he began at Stony Brook in July, but students didn’t sound convinced with those estimates.

“Its hard to say how much he actually fought for us because we didn’t see any of that process,” said Kurtz.

The timing of the administration’s decision is particularly tricky for students who are not graduating this year. All Southampton students will be welcomed at the main campus, but transferring to another university will be difficult, especially since many deadlines have already passed. At NYU, Penn State and Cornell for example, deadlines for transfer students passed as long ago as February 1. Other universities, like Hofstra, accept transfer applications on a rolling basis but encourage early applications. Albany and Binghamton, both fellow SUNY campuses, are still accepting transfer applications.

Stop the presses. That is what the Statesman faces in the wake of massive USG budget cuts.

The Statesman, Stony Brook University’s oldest newspaper dating back to the Oyster Bay campus in the late 1950s, is facing the biggest cut in USG funding in it’s 53 year history.

The Undergraduate Student Government budget for the 2010-2011 academic year, which was approved by the Senate Tuesday evening, reduces the Statesman’s USG line budget to $2,500 from an allocation last year of over $27,000.

That will be a steep and painful cut the paper will have to endure if they do not recoup some of the lost funding. Last year, despite substantial revenue generated from the sale of ads, the paper was operating at a $39,000 loss according to the paper’s business manager Frank D’Alessandro.

“We were operating at a loss the previous year too, but not as bad,” he said.

The cut has Statesman Editor-in-Chief April Warren and the rest of the student staff questioning how to further cut costs and minimize the damage.

“The Statesman has been looking into going weekly,” said Warren. “We’ve asked Frank [D’Alessandro] to crunch the numbers.”  The paper currently puts out two issues per week.

Reducing the frequency of publication would be just the latest in a series cost cutting maneuvers for the Statesman. In the last year, the paper reduced the circulation of each issue by 1000 copies, they eliminated their paid advertising staff position, D’Alessandro took a pay cut, and expenses like travel costs that had previously been covered by the paper now must be paid out of pocket by the student editors and writers.

But the USG argues that even with little or no funding from student activities fees, the paper should be able to put out a quality paper at least once a week.

“If the Press can operate with $40,000 every other week, the Statesman should be able to get by with $80,000,” the approximate amount generated by advertising each year, said one USG source who is familiar with the budget process but wished to remain anonymous because the budget is not yet finalized.

Other campus publications like The Press and The Patriot were granted budgets at the same level or slightly higher than this year’s. And the online news site The Independent is seeking USG funding for the first time. Think Magazine does not currently receive USG funding.

“The fact that they are unable to function properly means they haven’t done a good job managing their money,” the USG official continued.

The cut may have been particularly severe because The Statesman failed to schedule a budget hearing, which would have allowed the staff to explain their financial situation to a member of the USG budget committee in person.

“That was a huge oversight on our part,” admitted Warren.

But one USG representative, again wishing to remain nameless until everything was finalized, cited that as an example of a feeling of entitlement.

They marched in a circle and repeated a variety of blunt chants to express their opposition to Insidious, Creeping Tuition Hikes (or PHEEIA) as well as the University’s refusal to award Research Assistants a decent contract after three long years of negotiation. When President Stanley emerged from his research planning symposium, he passed by the demonstration and accepted a letter addressed to both him and SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, before hustling to his chauffeured car.

The demonstrators have the right idea; PHEEIA, a tuition-increasing monster, would be a disaster for SUNY students and the State of New York. President Stanley, who is on the record as being “tremendously excited” about the proposal, and Chancellor Zimpher, who clumsily defends it in a recent op-ed in the Albany Times Union, neglect their responsibilities to SUNY and betray the students by endorsing PHEEIA. Perhaps most disappointingly, student “leaders” like USG President Jasper Wilson and GSO President Dylan Selterman are failing their constituencies with their ill-considered support.

PHEEIA, a complex 36-page legislative proposal originating from Governor David Patterson, has many implications. One element of the bill, which PHEEIA supporters love to mention, is hard to argue with. Currently, the State of New York can raise tuition at SUNY and then take that money from schools to fund any state project, worthwhile or corrupt, out of the wallets of students. PHEEIA would keep the money SUNY collects available for SUNY expenditures. If that was all the bill did, it might be worthwhile.

Unfortunately, PHEEIA’s main purpose is to continue a half century-long attack on public institutions in America. Among other attacks on the heart and soul of SUNY, PHEEIA is a perpetual tuition increase engine. Tuition increase after tuition increase isn’t just bad for Stony Brook students’ personal interests; by undermining SUNY’s mission to provide accessible higher education to those priced out of private universities, PHEEIA interferes with SUNY’s function to create a more just society. An inequitable New York threatens all of us. It deprives us of both the accomplishments of those who won’t be able maximize their potential to contribute in our society, and the meaningful social order that only comes from a foundation of fairness.

Many of PHEEIA’s other measures are also troubling: the privatization of public property through 50-year leases, the loss of transparency and accountability that goes with moving important decision making from elected legislators to appointed trustees, the implications of the bill’s purchasing mandates on the ethics of SUNY contracting, the continuing erosion of student government autonomy. But the bottom line is that PHEEIA is about using a manufactured state budget crisis to shift the burden of funding SUNY from the state to the students through a combination of budget cuts and tuition increases. President Stanley says it is a “zero cost solution” when students, many of whom attend Stony Brook because they cannot afford a private university education, are asked to carry the weight for the many tangible benefits SUNY provides the community.

New York and the United States have suffered a generation of misrule by people of ill-will who talk about “starving the beast” and “shrinking it until you can drown it in the bathtub” as they schemed to manufacture a scenario where institutions like SUNY could be defunded. Three generations of indulgent and reversible tax cuts for the rich, institutionalized corruption and atrocious misprioritization of spending by Democrats and Republicans alike have set the stage for the illusory state budget “crisis”. The recent economic downturn was dramatic, but we are still a wealthy state in one of the wealthiest nations human history has known, and New York can be expected to dramatically increase its contribution to SUNY’s budget, starting now and increasing in the future. Our University’s leadership can be expected to be vocal advocates for reduced tuition contributing a smaller proportion to an increasing budget, even now—now, more than ever in fact. Both the increased hardship for some students and SUNY’s significant—if overemphasized—long term economic utility argue for genuine SUNY advocacy.

Armed with basic familiarity with the history of SUNY and of the dangerous and discredited ideology of privatization, the arguments for PHEEIA put forth by administrators come apart like tissue. The ossified mentality of aggressively cutting and wasting state revenue sources with the deliberate goal of creating a crisis to justify attacks on public institutions is a status quo none of us should tolerate any further. Chancellor Zimpher, meanwhile, scribbles out her appalling claims to be against some other, more imaginary status quo while she leads the charge to resign in despair. Budget restorations are not a feeble hope; they are necessary and nonnegotiable. Zimpher’s claim, like so much of the arguments coming from administrators, is nakedly ridiculous to any informed reader, and is plainly designed to play on ignorance.

Her further claim that genuine SUNY advocates propose no alternatives similarly assumes her readers are uninformed. Vocal supporters of SUNY, and state social spending more generally, have been offering countless creative and practical solutions to restore useful state spending for decades. We wouldn’t be the first to call for reversing Cuomo and Pataki tax cuts, or imposing a modest stock transaction tax, eliminating the failed draconian antidrug laws that necessitate outrageous prison spending or prohibiting legislators from regulating their personal economic interests.

When Hugh Carey (who was elected Governor of New York in 1975) was courting the organized student vote, he voiced the clear moral position that, allowing for the competing needs of New York State’s other social spending priorities, SUNY tuition should be regularly reduced until it was eliminated. Of course, student leadership was very different in 1975. Today we have the likes of Jasper Wilson and Dylan Selterman, who don’t think you’re taking on enough debt.

A world-class education free to all serious, academically qualified in-state students is a reasonable medium-term goal for today’s SUNY, as well. For administrators, the first step towards that goal is joining the people who are standing tall on SUNY, rather than lying about them in the Times Union.

No to PHEEIA. Zero tuition.

March 4 Day of Action at Stony Brook from THiNK Magazine on Vimeo.

Ahead of a nationwide day of action on March 4, hundreds of students at Stony Brook University took to the Student Activities Center Plaza on Wednesday to protest budget cuts and tuition increases recently proposed by the State University of New York.

Colorful signs and rhythmic chants lured passersby into the rally, which featured speakers from the United University Professionals and the student body.

After almost an hour on the SAC Plaza, the protest organizers took the rally mobile. A group of roughly 75 students marched to the Administration building loop to board a rented school bus that took them to the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology complex where university President Samuel L. Stanley was wrapping up a meeting.

Students continued the protest at CEWIT for another hour, with heavy police presence looking on. President Stanley emerged from the building and was bombarded with chants demanding his support for keeping tuition costs low and fighting budget cuts. After quickly taking a letter presented to him by one protester, Stanley was ushered to a car and back to campus.

SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher was also at the meeting at CEWIT, but left shortly before protesters arrived.

The rally had been organized to shed light on proposals by the state and SUNY administrators to overhaul the tuition process at the 64 campuses that comprise SUNY. Those proposals could nearly double the current tuition rates in 10 years, in smaller annual increments.