Tamryn Miller was an outstanding high school senior. She did volunteer work, played varsity soccer and had a 3.8 grade point average in all of her honors and advanced placement classes. She even received an academic excellence certificate signed by President Bush. All she wanted was admission into the University of California at Santa Cruz, but she didn’t get in.

Miller is just one of 30,000 students who was promised a slot at a University of California or California State University campus that was turned away, according to the Voice of America news.

Two years ago, before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had announced his Budget Plan for Higher Education, this was almost unheard of. But his budget plan breaks promises made by the Master Plan for Higher Education, which was drafted over 40 years ago.

In the Master Plan, California guaranteed a spot in a University to students who took tough classes and did well in high school. Schwarzenegger’s budget plan will not only reject 30,000 qualified students from CSU and UC colleges, but it will also raise fees by 14 percent for undergraduates, and 20 percent for graduates.

For those of you who will turn to community colleges because of the lower cost, don’t get too excited; The Budget Plan will hike up the cost for community college by 44 percent.

For those who think they can just apply for a grant to help with the money, there’s bad news for you, too – the Budget plan will cut the maximum grant from more than $9,000 for students attending independent colleges to $5,550 annually. If that wasn’t enough, student aid funding will be cut by $11 million.
The proposed Budget Plan may also eliminate programs that help prepare and recruit first-in-their-family and low-income college students.

It’s unfair to high school students who have worked so hard for four years taking honors classes, advanced placement classes, making grades, playing sports and joining clubs just so that they can get into college, and then having to face rejection after all of that work.

I’m angry because it seems that all of the budget problems consequences are landing in the laps of kids and teens. They’re the ones who get art and music taken away. Some of them get sports taken away, and then others don’t get into the college they’ve been working their butts off to get into.

So many people are now frustrated and some are probably even slacking off in school now because they’re thinking, “Well, if I’m going to a community college anyways I might as well relax and not worry about schoolwork right now.”
In the long run, our state will end up stupid, uneducated, un-artistic and un-musical just because the people who used to run California couldn’t handle their money.

BAMMA is a summer journalism camp for high school students coordinated by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism through the journalism department at SF State. For more information or comments on BAMMA, please contact Cristina Azocar.