Oregon Daily
o
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23,1991
EUGENE, OREGON
VOLUME 93. ISSUE 40
Congress to determine course of financial aid
House bill has
USSA support
By Daralyn Trappe
Emerald Associate E ditor _
Tht; future direction of federal finaii
t ial aid for higher education will likely
he determined within the next month by
Congress. The decisions about what pro
grams to cut, maintain, expand or < reate
will affect students and future students
for years to come.
See related story, Page 4
Student lobbyists from Washington
D.C. to Oregon have been working for
over a year to make student needs
known to national legislators, who will
set the course of financial aid when they
vote on the reuuthorization of the High
er Education Act
Such a vote takes place every five
years, when federal financial aid poli
cies are re-evaluated
The United States Student Associa
tion, the country's largest student lobby
ing group, set out recommendations that
the House of Representatives Subcom
mittee on Higher Education not only
took note of. but implemented into a bill
that will soon go to the House floor
USSA is now lobbying for that bill,
but a separate higher ed bill is also be
fore the Senate now, one that contains
none of the provisions requested by
USSA
The Senate bill is "quite lousy," in
USSA President Tajel Shah's opinion
It does not authorize enough funds for
the Pell grant program, she said, and
would maintain graduate fellowship aid
at $H5 million, the current total figure
for graduate aid. That figure not only
represents no increase, but fails to take
into account the projected rate of infla
tion, Shah said
The Senate bill also contains no pro
visions for child care for student par
ents, Shah said, and would increase the
interest rate of Guarantee Student
Loans.
"It's really not as promising a bill us
the House sub-committee bill is," she
said
The House bill represents the culmi
Higher education costs are escalating beyond many students hnancial means A
House bill, it approved by Congress, will put more federal dollars into student grants.
nation of student efforts that included
testimony before Congress in March
"It's a student-created bill with stu
dent interests ,it heart," Shall said
USSA's recommendations that wi*re
implemented into the House bill in
clude:
• Restoration of the loan/grunt balance
by making Pell (Iranis an entitlement si
milar to the Social Security policy
any person who is eligible would auto
matically he entitled to the money
Additionally, the Pell (Irani limit
would be increased to $4,500 a student,
up from the current limit ot $2,-100, and
half-time students would become eligi
ble
• Funding for programs for students
from disadvantaged backgrounds
• Adequate publicity and information
dissemination on student aid
• Increasing the eligibility ol stuii> ills
from moderate-income families This in
cludes the elimination of home equity
in calculating need
• Eliminating student loan origination
foes.
• Eliminating extraneous requirement
for student aid For example, the Depart
merit of Education recently dropped its
proposal to eliminale from the financial
alii system, those students in the bottom
10 percent of their classes
• Simplifying applii ulion process, de
velop a new system of updating infor
mation
• Improving wort-study program by
mating wort opportunities more mean
ingful
• Eliminating delayed disbursements
and financial penalties to students
whose loan ( her ts are late in arriving
• Ensuring that financial aid is not
counted as income when determining a
person's eligibility for irenclits such as
food stamps, and decreasing from 70
percent to 50 percent the portion of a
dependent student's income expia ted to
go toward college expenses
Shah noted that Oregon college slu
dents, now laced with significant tuition
increases, may need to rely on financial
aid more than ever,
"Students need to mobilize to ensure
that the House hill gets passed," she
sail! "We need to edui ate Congress
about the situation we’re in now It y\ill
put states in <i much hotter situation il
TurntoUSSA P.kjc 4
Student loans
a costly option
Fiy Kirsten Lucas
Emerald Reporter
Students tnii.iv ore bearing man: of
the burden for financing tlunr educa
tion than ever before
Over the past decade, them has
boon a dramatic shift from grants to
loans as the primary source of finan
cial aid for higher education
Tills shift has forced many stu
dents deep into debt and fias forced
Others out of file system all together,
said Stacey Leyton, vice president of
United States Student Association, a
national student lobbying group
fifteen years ago, grant money rep
resented tit) percent of financial aid
received by college students. Today,
grants make up only 48 percent of
that aid. Leyton said.
The gap between the cost of flnanc
ing an education and the amount of
money made available through grants
j is bridged by student loans and work
study (Work study makes up approx
tmatoly 3 percent of financial aid.)
According to IJSSA, the Stafford
(Guaranteed Student) Loan program
is currently the largest source of fi
nancial aid and provides more than
twice as much aid annually us the
Poll Grant program, which was cre
ated to he the foundation of the stu
dent aid system.
While tin: money borrowed in the
form of student loans has quadrupled
in the last decade, the student loan
default rate has remained constant at
about 10 percent, Leyton said
The default rate on Stafford Loans
taken out by students at the Universi
ty of Oregon in 1084 was only 4.4
percent, well below the national av
erago, said Shari Wood, director of
loan processing lor the State S< holer
ship Gommission.
(1089 was the most recent year for
which default statistics were avail
able )
Turn to LOANS. Page 4
Author takes Refuge from real life experiences, tragedies
Phcao by John Stoops
Author Terry Tempest Williams signs a copy ot her new booh at the
University Tuesday. Williams also road selections from the book, ti
tled Refugo.
By Carrie Dennett
Emerald Associate Editor
'Hu: most powerful storms ofton come not Iroin
fiction, but from real Ufa, and that's what author
1'crry Tempest Williams relates in her new hook,
Refuse An Unnatural History of I'amily and
I’lace.
"I think we need to know new stories." she
said "If we t an tell the truth about our lives, then
I think we can effect some change.'
Refuse tells the story of how the women of Wil
liams' family have been ravaged by cancer, and
sets it against the backdrop of the flooding of a
wildlife bird sanctuary near her home by the ris
ing waters of the Great Salt Lake
"1 could not separate the Bird Refuge from my
family. Williams writes in Refuse "Devastation
respects no boundaries The landscape of my
childhood and the landscape of my family, the
two things 1 had always regarded as bedrock,
were now subject to change Quic ksand
Williams, a nuturulist-in-residencc at the l tab
Mu .eiilil of Natural History, said Ret life g:,-w out
of 22 journals she filled during the seven years
these rvcnls took plate, lieglnning ill 1'.IB t when
the lake began to flood and her mother was diag
nosed with ovarian canter
The (let ision to turn the journals into a hook
t.une because, she said "1 think I saw a human
story, a story where nature mirrors a human fami
ly "
The hook is about finding refuge in change,
Williams said
"Rv moving through this landscape of grief, we
can dare to love ant e more," she said
Williams visited the University Tuesday for a
hook signing and reading ot selections from Ref
u/;e
The detail anti structure of Refuse tame from
the journals, she said, hut the retrospective as
pects came later
I’.m of the retrospective is Williams' realization
that the t .inter that swept the women in her fami
ly w is likely -t re* ult of w here her family lived
in Silt hake (lity, downwind from the ahove
and nut.It -,r testing th.it took plat e in Nevada
treiis I'SSl I"*,.'
I„ ' AUTHOR its