Community college students are once again being punished by the state for its budget failures. Recently, the CSU system announced that most spring transfers could be completely frozen in the face of Jerry Brown’s California Tax Increase Initiative.

Although it is widely accepted that an investment in higher education stimulates GDP growth and creates higher tax revenue in the future, students are again seen as a financial burden. At what point will the government realize the way out of the recession is through us?

Students are being edged out of our collective right to an education in what seems like a different way every day. First, student loans now look more like a mortgage as the costs of education are subsidized less and less by the state and federal government. Soon, a college degree will cost so much that only the wealthy can afford one. Now community college students are specifically being discriminated against by the CSU system with this freeze on spring transfers.

If students continue to be forced out of a more prosperous future, the middle class will disappear entirely and dramatic socioeconomic dichotomy will surely ensue. It is up to us, the workers of tomorrow, to take our future well-being into our own hands and stand up against the deplorable way the government treats us.

The best thing to do in times like these is simply to exercise your right to vote. The legislature can’t initiate any policies without your approval. You as voters have the power to pass the tax initiative that will keep CSU enrollment open.
When push comes to shove, the white collar representatives in Sacramento continue to push us farther than any other demographic of people. We are the future of this state. In fifteen or twenty years, we will be the ones balancing state budgets and funding state educa– tion. When that time comes, let us remember that we had to fight for every last dollar of funding.