A showdown at high noon had students shouting "Yee-hah" for additional financial aid funding at the State Capitol Wednesday.
More than 60 students from ASU and UA sported cowboy hats while chanting as they marched to the Capitol to support increased financial aid, and urge the legislature to allocate $13.4 million to the Arizona Financial Aid Trust.
Arizona Students' Association, an advocacy organization for public university students, hosted the rally.
A standing partnership between students and the state moves 1 percent of student tuition into the financial aid trust. The state then matches the contribution 2:1, said economics sophomore and ASA board chair Devin Mauney.
In previous years, it was a 1:1 contribution, but the state did not meet its end of the deal and always under-funded the trust, he added.
"When the statute changed [last year] they agreed to match student contributions 2:1," he said.
Since the change, the state has delivered.
But the trust is the only state-based resource available to help public universities pay for higher education, and it's still not enough, said Rep. Jackie Thrasher, D-Ariz.
"In fiscal year 2005, there were 38,000 students that needed financial assistance," Thrasher said. "Only 5,250 had their needs fully met and that equates to only 13.4 percent of the students, and that's not good enough."
Arizona is last for funding state-based financial aid and it needs to change, said Arizona Board of Regents Student Regent Ed Hermes.
The students called out specific legislators and senators with chants asking for a "Yee-hah" to show support. Sens. Karen Johnson and Jack Harper, R-Ariz., were among those who called out.
Joaquin Rios, president of Young Democrats of Arizona, said he hopes the governor and Legislature listen to the students and make financial aid a priority when they discuss the budget.
"Financial aid is the thing that makes the higher education system equitable and a truly public institution," Rios, a political science junior, said.
Due to the nature of being a student, many weren't able to make it, he added.
"I hope they take into consideration all of the students that couldn't be here because they were working or in class," Rios said. "Many more students are out there supporting those that were able to make it [to the Legislature] today."
More than 100 students were expected to show up, including a bus full of students from NAU, but the bus broke down on the way to the State Capitol, Mauney said.
"One of the effects of under-funding our university system is that we can't even get people down from NAU," Hermes said.
Reach the reporter at: kyle.snow@asu.edu.
