Accomplishments 2009 - 2010
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.
When Senator Feinstein began to waiver on her support for this increase in student aid, CALPIRG, ASUCI, and other offices and groups at UCI spent hours calling members and sending emails to show Senator Feinstein how much her constituents want and need more federal higher education funding and urged her to support the largest student financial aid law in history.
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.
Here at UC Irvine, we held a press conference on Ring Road
and passed out hundreds of information brochures on what the new law
means. Students spoke to the press about these new laws and got Ring
Road its 15 minutes of fame on CBS!
"Fried Rice…$3!"
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.
Coverage for 26 year olds on their parents' health care policies
kicks in this Fall. In April, CALPIRG students went to Sacramento and
asked state legislators to sign on to a letter we sent California
Insurance Companies asking them to enact this change sooner so
graduating seniors don’t have to go without insurance this summer.
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 UCI, we held Green Building Tours of the Student Center to brag about how environmentally forward we are in Irvine. Did you know there are solar panels are on the roof? Or that over 19% of the materials used to build it are recycled materials? Students and community members learned about how green our Student Center is on a CALPIRG Green Building Tour with UCI's own quality assurance architect Jim Brittell.
We also generated 884 phone calls to Senators Feinstein and Boxer for climate change action -- with 313 people calling the Senators on Ring Road in just one day! Thanks to all the eco-friend Anteaters we have on campus, we collected 1275 petition signatures calling for an Earth Day Revolution.
What's Earth Day without recycling?? CALPIRG put on a "Trashion
Show" Fashion Show during Earth Week. We made outfits out of magazines,
plastic bags, and cardboard and showed them off on Ring Road as we
asked people to take a second to protect the environment.
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 CALPIRG students
from UCI joined 5,000 students across the country for a day of service
in our communities. Together, we raised also raised over $1,000 for the
Orange County Food Bank, Oxfam’s Haiti Relief and national efforts to
combat poverty.
Bringing 21st Century Transportation to
America.
From high-speed rail to mass transit, it’s time for 21st
century transportation in America. We’re calling for increased federal
funding of transit projects including the California Bullet Train
project that will make it easier for us to get around and cut global
warming pollution, traffic, and smog.
Remember how we worked to
pass the High Speed Rail initiative in '08? This year, we kept working
on high speed rail across the state and secured $2.25 billion in federal
funding for California's bullet train! Ching-Yun, former CALPIRG
Chapter Chair and UCI class of 2010, met Governor Schwarzeneggar at a
press conference for High Speed Rail in October. Once it's built, we'll
be able to get from Orange County to the Bay area in two and a half
hours.
