CALPIRG at UC Davis

Passing the largest student financial aid law in history.
In March, President Obama signed the largest student loan bill in history into law. The new law increases financial aid for students by $36 billion, and it won't cost taxpayers a dime because it's funded by cutting wasteful hand-outs to banks and loan companies like Sallie Mae and Citibank. Across the country 10,000 of you called, wrote, emailed, and tweeted your Congressmen asking them to take action. In addition, our DC staff worked tirelessly to bring your message to legislators and their staff.

Stopping the worst unfair practices by credit companies.
In February the Credit CARD Act went into effect. This law protects students and ends some of the worst unfair practices of credit card companies, making it illegal for credit card companies to profit by tricking people into paying late. It was the outcry of students like you that passed this law, and the banks aren't happy about it - this is the first time in 40 years any law opposed by credit card companies has passed.

At UC Davis, we spread the word about better consumer restrictions for students by handing out hundreds of educational pamphlets about the new law and how it effects students.

Reforming the health care system in order to make health care affordable.
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the insurance industry to stop reform, health insurance reform became law. Our priority has been to make health care affordable. This law takes unprecedented steps to lower costs for families and small businesses, and it prohibits insurers from using pre-existing conditions, errors on forms, and lifetime or yearly caps to drop your coverage or price it out of reach. It also helps young adults – a highly uninsured demographic - by allowing them to stay on their parents’ coverage until age 26.

On campus we raised awareness about the issue of health care coverage for young adults in America.  We hosted a panel discussion for 50 students, generated calls into our representatives, and took hundreds of photo petitions of students supporting reform.

Building support for global warming solutions.
We're calling on the Senate to build a clean energy economy that will create jobs and enhance America’s national security while protecting the environment. Across the country, we mobilized over 30,000 students and community members to contact their Senators to call for clean, renewable energy and an end to our dependence on oil and coal.  We held events on campus and off to educate thousands of people, resulting in more than 100 news stories about our work.

At UC Davis, we joined a 72 hour nationwide youth call in event, generating 600 calls from students into our representatives offices.  We also collected 700 petition signatures in support of clean energy legislation, made cookies from a solar oven, ant attended 3 rallies to protest Texas oil companies’ interference in California’s global warming laws. Our campaign ranked as one of the top 10 student groups in the country doing the most to fight global warming, and we were invited to go to Washington DC to meet with Senator Kerry and lobby our representatives in the Capitol for clean energy solutions.  

Helping rebuild Haiti, and fighting poverty here at home.
It's been a tough year for many American families, and the earthquake in Haiti has affected millions. Through our annual Hunger Cleanup 50 students from UC Davis joined students across the country for a day of service in our communities.  We raised $3,700 for Wind Youth Services, a local shelter and resource center for homeless youths in Sacramento, as well as Oxfam’s Haiti Relief and national efforts to combat poverty.  Beyond the hunger clean up, we also organized sandwich making events, feeding several hundred homeless people, painted murals for Habitat for Humanity, ran food drives, and organized fundraising events, like a dodgeball tournament, for Oxfam’s relief fund.

Protecting our Forests
Between state budget cuts and national leniency on preservation laws, our forests, one of America’s greatest resources, are increasingly vulnerable.  At UC Davis, the forest conservation campaign worked to pass national and statewide legislation, while also winning victories in our campus back yard.

In the past few months, we’ve collected hundreds of signatures to support reinstating the national Roadless Area Conservation Act, as well as a ballot measure to preserve California’s exceptional state parks.  We also worked with landscaping and ASUCD senators to plant 5 fruit trees (with another 7 on the way), to promote an edible campus! Happy munching.

Textbook Affordability
In the face of rising tuition costs and living expenses, college students cannot afford to pay for necessary school supplies, most expensive of which are textbooks. The cost of textbooks has been rising for decades because publishing companies take advantage of the textbook market and charge high prices. At UC Davis, textbooks have always been an issue of concern to students. We have lobbied professors at campus in our efforts to introduce Open Textbooks. In the last year, we’ve collected over 120 signatures of support from professors. In addition, the campaign is working to ask professors to start using existing Open Textbooks in the courses they teach next fall.

One of our greatest victories this year was advancing a textbook rental program on campus. Working with the UC Davis Bookstore, there will be a textbook rental program on campus beginning next fall.

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Also check out some of the great things we did this last semester:

New Voters Project: In California and nationwide, we helped register and turn out young voters. Statewide, CALPIRG helped register nearly 20,000 young people to vote. On Election Day, there were 3.4 million more young voters nationwide in 2008 compared to 2004. The youth share of the electorate also surpassed that of people over 65 - an impressive feat.

Hunger and Homelessness: The United States is in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As more and more people are losing their jobs and homes, demand at food banks, shelters, and other agencies is skyrocketing. To make matters worse, state and federal programs that serve people in time of need are being cut as state revenues drop.

Despite all this, there is plenty of food worldwide to feed the existing human population. In fact, the world produces 10% more food today than is needed to feed everyone. Yet millions of people throughout the United States currently exist without adequate food and shelter. The U.S. is one of the richest, most advanced nations in the world and could easily end hunger and homelessness if we prioritized it as a society. Experts estimate that if we fully funded federal assistance programs, we could end domestic hunger in five years. The problems of hunger and homelessness worsen each year as critical societal decisions are made based on special interests instead of the public's interest.

CALPIRG is working to mobilize students in their own communities and call on elected officials to prioritize fighting poverty on a local, state, and federal level. This semester, CALPIRG will be leading the way by organizing many exciting events across the state.  At UC Davis, we’ll be directing a number of service projects, coordinating food and clothing drives, reaching out to community organizations, holding fundraisers, and running a hunger awareness week.

     We are facing one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. Unemployment rates keep going higher and more people are forced into poverty every day. This spring we joined the national Hunger Cleanup, a day of service and fundraising, to serve our local community and raise money for local, national, and international agencies addressing poverty.

Making Higher Education Affordable:

Students at California's community colleges are working so hard to pay the bills that they aren't making the grade. Facing high college costs, around 80% of California community college students work, and often so much they hurt their chances of reaching their academic goals. Working full-time while in college cuts students' likelihood of success in half, but many students do so without taking advantage of the financial aid that can help them cut back on work to focus on school.

Only 24% of California community college students with the intention of completing a certificate, degree, or transfer actually accomplish their goal within six years. To increase student success at the community colleges, we must increase student grant aid.  This quarter, students at Davis will be working with Sacramento City College to highlight the need for increased grant aid.  We’ll be generating calls into our representatives, releasing new findings through press conferences, working with the financial aid departments to increase aid accessibility, among other tactics.

In January, we helped convince Congress to include several key measures in the economic stimulus package, including a $17 billion increase in Pell grant funding, more work-study aid, and bigger tax credits for low-income students and their families. Also, at the end of February, President Obama proposed a budget for 2010 which significantly reinvests in the Pell grant and makes sure it increases each year according to inflation. The proposal pays for itself by cutting excessive subsidies to banks and lenders in the student loan program.

 Health Care Reform: Health care costs are out of control. Health premiums are increasing three times faster than wages and hurting businesses that cover their employees. But paying more doesn’t get us care that’s any better, with insurers dropping and refusing to cover patients, and discriminating against the sick.

Right now, we have a historic, once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally win the type of change America’s health care needs. President Obama has put forward a plan to rein in rising costs, offer Americans better choices, and provide coverage American families can count on. But turning this plan into a new health care system for Americans will only happen if we can overcome the influence of the insurance and drug lobbies that are doing their best to stop any proposed reforms.  This quarter, students are bringing the debate to life! We’ll be educating the campus and the community about the need for health care reform by collecting health care “horror stories,” generating hundreds of calls into our representatives, sending photo petitions, and cultivating a spirit of awareness and activism on campus.

Global Warming Solutions: We know that global warming threatens our way of life.  According to scientists the window of opportunity to avoid the worst effects of global warming is quickly closing.  The time for action is now.

Fortunately, we have the clean energy sources and energy efficiency technology needed to dramatically reduce our global warming pollution while at the same time transforming our economy and moving towards a sustainable future.  From cars that go 100 miles on a gallon of gas to buildings that are so energy efficient they actually produce energy to wind and solar power—we have global warming solutions.  

To stop the worst effects of global warming, we need to reduce global warming pollution at least 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.  This fall, we’ll work to make sure people across the country know that we have the technology to solve this problem and to ensure their voices are heard in the halls of Congress.

Over the past few years, we’ve demonstrated the solutions by getting our campuses to make buildings more sustainable and pushing our states to get more power from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.  Now we have the opportunity to build on those victories and get Congress to pass an historic bill to tackle global warming.  

Already this summer, the House of Representatives took a step forward and passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act.  Unfortunately, despite support for the bill from President Obama and leaders in Congress, the  Big Oil and the dirty coal lobbyists were able to weaken the bill and we know they will be doing everything they can to stop the bill from passing in the Senate. .  

This fall, we’ll work to build public support, generate media attention and educate the public so that we can strengthen and pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, ensuring that it requires that 25% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020 and that the EPA can force the dirtiest power plants to reduce pollution quickly.  We’ll do this through a variety of grassroots tactics on campus, including holding educational events such as green building tours, generating calls and petitions into our representatives, and engaging the community through off campus activities. 

In January we worked to make sure that the economic stimulus package included critical funding for programs that will create jobs and protect the environment, including $16 billion for public transit and $78 billion for clean energy and green infrastructure. Now we are collecting petitions, generating phone calls, and shining a media spotlight on the issue to make sure our members of Congress continue to fight for legislation to put us on a path to solve global warming by increasing clean energy, reducing emissions, and creating new jobs.

Protecting Students from Bad Credit Card Practices: Our report, "The Campus Credit Card Trap," received national attention for exposing the bad practices of credit card companies on campus and has been quoted in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times. We used this attention to educate Congress and help pass the national Credit Card Holder Bill of Rights to stop some of the worst credit terms and conditions that can plunge students - and all consumers - into debt.

Textbook Affordability: Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks, which is 20% of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college! And the prices keep going up.

We think that textbooks should be reasonably priced, students should be able to easily sell their books and used books should be easy to find.

CALPIRG is currently supporting legislation authored by Senator Calderon – the Accountability in College Textbook Publishing Practices Act (SB 388).  SB 388 would help create the right conditions for price competition to occur, the best way for us to force textbook prices down.  The bill would require publishers to disclose their prices and revision cycles to professors when marketing textbooks, and ensure that publishers stick to those prices for the next semester.  The bill would also require publishers to offer all textbook “bundles” as separate books and supplemental items so students can purchase only the materials they need. 

 UC Davis has launched a campaign to bring comprehensive results to the high cost of textbooks this year.  We’ll be working with other student groups to establish a textbook rental program on campus and to secure more professor endorsements for open (online) textbooks. 

 Click here to read the testimony of Levi Menovski, the chapter chair at UCD Calpirg, at the Senate Education Committee hearing in Sacramento

Open textbooks (free, online textbooks) are really catching on, thanks in part to our campaign to shine the spotlight on these great alternatives. Over 2,000 faculty members have signed our statement of support for open textbooks and a new publisher just released 10 new open textbooks. Also, a new bill was introduced in Congress that would fund the creation of more open textbooks.

 Save the Sea Otters: People used to think that the oceans were so vast and marine animals so plentiful that humans could not damage marine ecosystems. We now know that is not true and our oceans are vulnerable. Many populations of whales are depleted or threatened with extinction like northern right whales of which 350 remain. All seven species of sea turtles are either threatened or endangered. 

Destructive overfishing, pollution and habitat damage are putting important marine animals at risk. Many populations are in serious decline. One important way to save these magnificent species is to end destructive overfishing.    

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently finalizing rules regulating fishing practices in our oceans.  Large multi-national fishing companies are pushing them to keep rules lax so they can continue business as usual.  It is critical that they hear from the public in a big way to ensure they come out with rules that will help restore our oceans health.   

One of our key tactics is collecting and delivering at least 50,000 public comments (and tens of thousands more in coalition with other concerned groups) to the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service calling for strong, clear rules that stop overfishing and hold commercial fishing operations accountable for going over annual catch limits.

UC Davis students will not only encourage the establishment of marine protected areas, which would protect our threatened marine environments, we will also be generating calls into our representatives and inspiring the community, both on and off campus, to take action against off shore drilling and reduce the plastic waste that cripples our marine environments.