The past year - through a student's view

As the 2008-09 academic year at Eastern Washington University draws to a close, the students and faculty at the university look back to which news stories and events were most present in their minds. Despite the myriad of incidents that took place over the course of 10 months, there were two topics that were at the forefront: budget cuts and layoffs.

"For me, it was the budget situation," said James Riddelle, a junior, who expressed interest in how Riverpoint was going to be affected, and was disappointed by the lack of information about it. "One of my classes focused on the budget, but unfortunately I never got a chance to go to any of the forums or the student protest."

Riddelle gave the impression that the decisions in Olympia will have as a justification for his answer, stating he disagreed with Gov. Gregoire's tuition hikes that will increase it by 14 percent in the 2009-10 academic year.

"Gregoire justifies it as saving the colleges and preserving it for future generations," he said. "But I think that, with Washington being one of the 'hi-tech' states that employs a lot of medical persons and engineers, to cut higher education seems like a mistake. I'm glad I'll be out in a year."

For faculty members such as Pat Terrell, an active member of Eastern's union, her sentiments were easily found.

"The layoffs coming up are the most important to me," she said. "It's very sad that when the economy is down, we have to make it worse by laying people off. Washington state is not the only one that has been hit hard."

As part of the negotiations between the union and the university over the contract that will be finalized and ratified by a vote June 15, Terrell described the bargaining process as very difficult.

"I don't think it was fair or just," she said. "They really need to look into that. When we sat down they said 'no' to everything."

Senior Jill Attridge and sophomore Jenny Glendenning held the strongest reasons for holding the lack of state funding as paramount to them, as their employment at the university was impacted negatively.

"Last week I learned that I was having my hours cut at work," said Attridge, who works at the JFK Library. As she is planning on going into graduate studies, she commented that, "It sucks, especially for people like me, who have to pay more tuition, but get less hours to pay for it at work."

Glendenning, a communications and public relations major, lost her work study job in Showalter Hall, managing the career resources library, as well as all but two of her grants that, until now, had covered her entire college costs. She was notified of her job loss on EagleNet when her work study was no longer available for viewing.

"Nobody came and told me," she said. "It just showed up online."

Although she said she has found a well-paying internship for the summer, she said that the new financial burden will require her to take out loans for the first time.