Students at Whitman College in Washington are using personal appeals to try to persuade state officials not to cut their financial aid.
 
Whitman junior Kate Pringle conducted a series of two-minute interviews with 11 students, in which they argued for their student aid funding to be restored. The interviews were part of a larger effort by the Independent Colleges of Washington to raise awareness about threats to financial aid funding.

Both the House and the Senate in Washington passed individual budgets on Feb. 23 restoring all funding to the Need Grant, Washington Scholars, and WAVE Programs. Both budgets, however, proposed to reduce funding for the State Work Study program by 30 percent, translating to an estimated $70,000 loss for Whitman students.

According to the College Data website, a year at Whitman costs $47,600, and over half of the student body applied for financial aid last year. The average student graduated from Whitman with nearly $17,000 of debt.

Pringle thinks putting students’ faces in front of lawmakers is a way to humanize the issue.

“The video project is an effort to put real people and their stories into the discussion about student aid so that the aid programs aren’t just treated as cold numbers on a spreadsheet,” said Greg Scheiderer, vice president of the Independent Colleges of Washington.

Chadd Bennett, ICW director of research and publications, said he is planning on featuring the video series on YouTube and on the ICW's Facebook and Web pages.
 
Earlier this year, Governor Christine Gregoire proposed to suspend a number of financial aid programs available to Washington state college students in an effort to balance the state's $2.6 billion budget.
 
Pringle, who works in Whitman's Office of Financial Aid, said the interviews could be more effective than students' written requests for aid.
 
"It's one thing for us to send a letter or for someone to quote statistics about how many students rely upon financial aid, but it's an entirely different experience to see a real student telling their story and expressing how much they need the aid," she said. "I only benefit from some of the programs that were in danger, but I know how many students really are affected by all of them due to my job, so it really made me anxious and a little outraged that the state would consider taking those programs away."
 
Whitman junior McKenna Milici, and her sister, sophomore Rhya, were among those interviewed on camera.
 
"Obviously, the idea that the state is cutting our program now will have a huge impact on my family since there are two of us trying to go here," McKenna Milici said. "I'm not quite sure if our video will be seen by legislators, but we hope...to stress not only how this is affecting students, but to provide a tangible image for how this is affecting families."


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