On Thursday, Feb. 20, RWC Undergraduate Student Senators Tammy M. Carmack and Tim Bentley made a trip to the Ohio State Capital for the ‘Storm the Statehouse’ event, put together by the Ohio Council of Student Governments. Delegates from 19 Universities from across Ohio converged on OSU, to plan and begin the attack on Senators and State Representatives. The group broke up into teams. UC had enough attendees to form three separate teams, the second highest number of the 19 schools in attendance.
The RWC group met with three senators, one representative and the aides to two other senators. The group’s goal was to try to lobby for higher education funding, since Governor Taft’s proposed budget for 2004/2005 will reduce taxes used for college education.
“There is a crunch going on with this years budget,” said Tim Bentley, “and UC has been asked to give back money that it has received for funding this year.”
According to Governor Taft’s budget, the only way to keep things at the same level over the next two years was to impose a higher ‘sin tax’ on cigarettes and alcohol, but the tax hike was rejected by the House and Senate.
According to Bentley, the RWC group came ‘that close’ to actually meeting Taft, as he made his way past them in a hallway of the parking garage.”But his bodyguards made sure we never got close enough to speak,” Bentley said.
The group left copies at each office of letters written by the Undergraduate Senate, urging support of higher education funding. Similar letters are available for RWC students to sign at the tables for any of the”Monday March Madness” events.