Students from Georgetown and across the nation turned out to oppose reform to higher education legislation at the House of Representative’s Committee of Education and the Workforce session on Wednesday.
But their efforts failed to make a difference. Despite the students’ presence, the committee voted to cut $14.5 billion from student loans, a decision that may lead to the biggest cuts to student aid programs in United States history.
The cuts, if signed into law by the House, will require each loan recipient to pay back as much as $5,800 extra, due to changes in interest rates and subsidies to student lenders, according to a United States Student Association press release.
For hours, the students stood against the back wall of the room, sporting coordinated T-shirts bearing the slogan “Stop the Raid on Student Aid.” Many arrived as early as 7 a.m. to guarantee a spot at the meeting.
“Having students there really puts a human face on the issue because it’s easy to just look at a piece of paper and make cuts,” Geoffrey Greene, the Georgetown University Student Association’s Secretary for External Affairs, said. “But it’s harder when there are faces in the audience.”
Their presence did not go unnoticed.
“We’ve got to find other places in the budge to cut first before we deny access to higher education,” Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) said. “I hope we don’t take it off of the backs of these students in the back of this room today.”
Opinions were divided along party lines, with republicans supporting the amendment and democrats opposing it.
“This committee should help make college more affordable, not put college further out of reach for millions of qualified and deserving students.” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior democrat on the committee, said.
The College Democrats were among those present at the committee hearing.
“More people are aware now that this is a problem, but we still have a long way to go,” Robert Kris, College Democrats communications and publicity director, said. “It’s not a matter of rich and poor, republican and democrat. Cuts to student loans will effect our entire campus, whether directly or through decreasing the quality of the study body, and we need to unite to stop them.”
Georgetown’s Assistant to the President Scott Fleming (SFS ‘72), who attended Wednesday’s session, believes it is not too late to prevent the cuts from going through. The House Budget Committee still needs to compile the savings into a larger Budget Reconciliation Bill before the legislation can be brought to the House floor.
“I know that a lot of people wish that every day were Christmas and I were Santa Claus, but its not, and I’m not,” Committee Chairman John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said.
