Student Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee discussed Tuesday night its upcoming trip to speak with legislators in Richmond, where it will voice its opinions about three student-related bills now going through the General Assembly.
The main goal of the Feb. 13 trip is to advocate for student issues and to “concentrate our influence to the maximum extent possible by choosing bills we know that have nearly unanimous support” from the student body, Legislative Affairs Committee chair Patrick Dorsey said.
“We wanted to choose bills that we felt empowered us to speak out on behalf of the majority of students,” Dorsey said, noting that the Committee will concentrate on three “relatively noncontroversial” bills: one involving pending state budget cuts, another dealing with state residency requirements for state universities and a third that aims to simplify the process by which college students register to vote.
The first bill the Committee opposes is House Bill 1696, which would eventually increase the admission rate of in-state students at public universities to nearly 80 percent from the current 60 to 70 percent that they constitute now. Should the bill pass, the decrease in the number of out-of-state students would have a financial impact on the University, Dorsey said.
“U.Va. is in a special situation in that, in addition to being a public institution, it is a University of national prominence,” Dorsey said. “The University’s status and the quality of its academic experience depend on it being able to draw the best students from the Commonwealth and from the entire nation. The committee is opposed to any measure that attempts to place restrictions on the types of students who go to school here, as HB 1696 would do.”
As of now, the bill has been assigned to the House Committee on Higher Education, said Gwen Bailey, deputy clerk of Senate Legislative Information and Constituent Services.
The Committee also plans to convey its support for a section in House Bill 1834 that aims to repeal the requirement that the University’s Board of Visitors must submit an annual report of the University’s annual expenditures, which suggests, Dorsey said, that University spending is subject to review and approval by the General Assembly.
Such a report, Dorsey said, has been a “traditionally cumbersome responsibility” and superfluous because only 8.2 percent of the University’s 2008 to 2009 fiscal year operating budget came from the General Fund of the State of Virginia General Assembly. The University, therefore, should have more “freedom to spend its money in the way it thinks it should ... and have as much freedom as possible to design its own budget.”
The bill’s sponsor, Del. David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, similarly noted in an earlier interview that the bill is meant to “clean up the code” and simplify existing legislation. The bill is not intended to limit access to information, he added.
Dorsey noted that the Committee does not want to remove the General Assembly’s oversight entirely, but rather hopes to “achieve a measure of oversight commensurate with the funds” the University receives from the General Assembly. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education and Health, Bailey said.
Finally, the Committee plans to support House Bill 1630, which states that full-time attendance and a physical presence in a higher public institution is sufficient evidence for students to register to vote in the district where they attend school. The bill has been combined with House Bill 1878, which contains various voting and registration amendments, and is currently in the Privileges and Elections Committee, Bailey said.
Student Council President Matt Schrimper said it is important and beneficial for the Committee to receive a formal endorsement from the student body when they meet with the legislators. Such an endorsement will occur next week when Council votes on which bills to support based on the Committee’s recommendations.
Council members, as elected representatives of the student body, Dorsey added, are empowered to issue such an endorsement on behalf of the University, and would present a “pretty strong statement that the University is formally behind” them when they go to Richmond.
Both Dorsey and Schrimper agreed that engagements like the planned trip to Richmond have proven useful in the past.
“They’ve been engaged and they’ve always been able to follow up on us and our conversations,” Schrimper said of the commonwealth legislators. “I think that in the past they’ve been a strong voice for the student body.”
Dorsey agreed, recalling a time when legislators approved funding for a renovation of Old Cabell Hall.
“If legislators hear from students, they’ll keep that in mind when they’re voting on them,” he said.
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