SETH MICHAEL MEYER
Staff Columnist
As a Pennsylvanian that goes to a SUNY school, it needs to be said that New York offers something truly special for its students. The SUNY Student Assembly, a legislative body of students that represent all 1.4 million students of the SUNY system, works year after year to advocate for the interests of their constituency at the state and federal level and their efforts have shown to be successful.
In an email sent out last week from the SUNYSA Office of Communications, the executive board responds to the newly passed state budget specifically regarding what has been done for the SUNY colleges. They mention a new funding floor for community colleges in the SUNY system, a first of its kind in New York. “[This guarantees] that students will not have to face the consequences of declining state support,” a rising threat due to recently low enrollment numbers.
The passage of the budget also includes the José Peralta NYS DREAM Act which allows “DREAMers” to multiple financial aid programs. Along with that, the Excelsior Scholarship was expanded and keeping with the extensive fight for environmental sustainability, single-use plastic bags have been banned.
These accomplishments for the SUNY system and for New York come in part from efforts of students like you and I going beyond acknowledging the problems we face and making steps, even small ones, to make things better. But the opportunity to involve oneself into advocacy, such as that of SUNYSA often goes unrealized and unappreciated.
Students like us here at Fredonia have the opportunity to not only involve themselves with advocacy at Fredonia but to advocate for their peers in Albany, often times meeting with the SUNY Chancellor and even speaking on behalf of the SUNY students to the state assembly.
At the Spring 2019 SUNY Student Assembly Conference, one of our peers, Junior violin performance/political science double-major Cristian Rodriguez, took the plunge into student advocacy and ran to be one of three officials who will represent all of the four-year colleges in the SUNY system. Rodriguez was elected and will serve as one of nearly twenty Student Assembly representatives in the state.
I challenge the students of Fredonia to take the plunge into student advocacy; to not only identify an issue on campus or off, but to team-up, collaborate, look for advice and work to make your school, your state, and even the world a little better.
I encourage you to talk to Rodriguez if you’re interested specifically in SUNYSA, and above all I encourage you all to speak up.