New York legislators’ offices across the state were flooded with calls during a ‘phone slam’ organized by the New York Public Interest Research Group on Tuesday.
The calls were part of NYPIRG’s efforts to block tuition increases and funding cuts to the New York State public university system.
NYPIRG members set up a table in front of the Union and offered passersby the use of their cell phones to call the offices of Governor George E. Pataki, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Assemblyman Ron Canestrari, chair of the Assembly’s higher education committee, and Senators Kenneth LaValle and John Flanagan, Suffolk County’s senators.
Callers were given typed handouts with suggested messages to leave for the politicians, such as ‘[Pataki’iacute;s] proposal to raise tuition, cut financial aid, and cut funds for colleges and universities is bad public policy.’
Pataki has proposed raising SUNY tuition by $1,200, cutting the Tuition Assistance Program by one-third, reducing the SUNY operating budget by 15 percent and downsizing the Educational Opportunity Program.
Helen Ho, one of two project coordinators for the Stony Brook chapter of NYPIRG, said the individuals in the offices they had contacted were ‘igrave;pretty courteous,’icirc; except for one.
‘Bruno’iacute;s office is hanging up on people, which is pretty unusual,’ Ho said. ‘We want to tie up their phone lines and make them mad and upset.’
NYPIRG chapters in universities throughout the state participated in the phone slam.’dagger; Melissa Morahan, the second project coordinator, said that, in all, 4,000 calls were made to politicians’ offices statewide on Tuesday.
‘Some politicians said they hadn’t seen or heard from students, so [the phone slam] was our opportunity to let them hear from us,’ Morahan said.
Both Morahan and Ho said that Tuesday’s was the first of many phone slams that NYPIRG had planned.’dagger; NYPIRG chapters around the state, including the one at Stony Brook, will be organizing future call-ins as part of their ongoing ‘No Tuition Hike’ campaign
