Rutgers students have their say in Washington

When 22 Rutgers students descended on Capitol Hill last month, they were well prepared to make a forceful case to members of Congress for federal, need-based student aid.

Not only did they bring facts and figures to support their call to preserve and improve grant and loan programs, some threatened with extinction, they also brought personal stories of doors opened and opportunities gained – thanks to the aid they are fighting to protect. College, many said, was a viable option for them only because of such federal programs as Pell Grants, Perkins Loans and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants.

The students put a human face on the numbers and programs in meetings in the offices of the two New Jersey senators and 16 congressmen and women, most of them with the lawmakers themselves.

“The lawmakers were uniformly impressed by the students’ sincerity and grasp of the issues,” said Francine Newsome Pfeiffer, director of Rutgers’ Office of Federal Relations, which has coordinated the advocacy trip for the past eight years.  “With the pending reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and increased scrutiny of federal student aid programs, the advocacy visits by Rutgers’ students were especially important and timely.”

For the third year, the student delegation was accompanied by President Richard L. McCormick, who joined several of the small group visits with lawmakers. He presented the university’s concerns about saving and enhancing student assistance programs that help to make a Rutgers education accessible and affordable for thousands of students. About half of all Rutgers graduate and undergraduate students receive some type of federal assistance in the form of loans, grants and Federal Work Study jobs.

Rutgers College senior Sharo M. Atmeh of Fair Lawn, who made his third advocacy trip to Washington, said college, even at a state institution, would have been “prohibitively expensive” for him without federal and state assistance.

“Essentially, my educational lifeblood has been the federal assistance that I receive,” Atmeh said.

A political science major, Atmeh will head to Harvard this fall to study law and public policy in a joint degree program with the law school and the Kennedy School of Government.

He found cause for optimism in this year’s trip. “For the first two years, we received a warm welcome, but that was about it,” he said. “This year, however, the members of Congress were really receptive to our needs. There has been a sea change in Washington, and it is in favor of financial aid for students.”