At least one thousand students held walkouts and rallies last week to protest proposed tuition hikes and financial aid cuts in Washington. Students rallied at six institutions: the University of Washington, Washington State University, Eastern Washington University, Western Washington University, Evergreen State College, and Central Washington University.

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire proposed closing the state’s  $2.6 billion budget gap by cutting about $146 million from the State Need Grant program and $89 million from two-year and four-year schools, along with suspending work study and other financial aid programs.
 
Over 500 students and faculty held a walkout on Feb. 4 at Eastern Washington University, which has seen tuition and fees increase from $3,927 per year to $5,445 since 2005. Though four out of five EWU students already receive financial aid, the state legislature is considering increasing tuition another 14 percent next year.
 
Bethany Abbott, a senior at EWU, worked to register voters during the rally in an effort to increase the electoral power of Washington students. She said in an interview that she believes funding cuts would eventually result in fewer students getting educated, which ultimately would only damage the state. She said that 73 percent of EWU graduates go on to have jobs in Washington.
 
“An investment in our higher education is really an investment in our state as a whole,” Abbott said.
 
On Friday, an estimated 300 to 350 students from the University of Washington protested at the state Capitol. At Washington State University, about 150 students also held walkouts last week and plan to continue in March and April.
 
Last month Governor Gregoire used her annual State of the State Address to express her hesitancy to make heavy cuts, including for education and financial aid. The state must not “write off a generation of kids,” she said.
 
But when the state cut about 4,700 full-time government jobs in the first five months of this fiscal year, some 3,500 of them were in higher education.

While Gregoire expressed a desire to retreat on $779 million of the cuts she had proposed to the overall budget, she was unclear how much that would affect funding for higher education.
 
UW junior Yunhee Choi, who said she comes from a low-income, single-parent family, was one student rallying at the Capitol.

“If these cuts take place, my life is over,” she said.

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