Campus reacts to upcoming changes

Nick McNamara/Roundup nmcnamara.roundupnews@gmail.com

Proposition 30 passed last Tuesday in the general election, which led some on the Pierce College campus to express joy, while others expressed disappointment.

Dr. Denise Robb, assistant professor of Political Science, was optimistic about the outcome of the vote.

“It’s not going to make things amazing, it just means we’re not going to have more cuts,” Robb said.

Proposition 30 passed with the final results being 53.6 to 46.4 percent of voters in favor of the ballot measure.

“It looks like the voters finally said that they’re willing to pay for education, which astounded me,” Robb said. “And it’s because young people voted.”

Robb attributed this increase in youth voters to the new ability to register online, rather than the previous process of filling out the paper and mailing it in.

18 million voters were registered in California, up from the previous record of 17.3 million according to Robb.

“This is historic,” Robb said.

But not everyone was pleased with the outcome, such as student John Lubran, who said the proposition will not solve the

“crisis with education.”

Lubran said that Proposition 30 will only be a minor, temporary fix that people will find ways to get around.

“[People] will buy less and spending will slow down, and therefore the income received by taxes will decrease, overall decreasing the amount of funding given to schools,” Lubran said.

“Instead of an increase in funding there will be a decrease in funding and schools will hurt even more.”

Lubran also said that he expected another bill to be needed in the future to remedy the results he said would be seen as a result of proposition 30.

“I’m guessing the answer is going to be the same as last time, which will be even more taxes,” Lubran said.

Somewhere in between the two was Irvin Rojas, a Mechanical Engineering major.

Rojas voted for it because he said it would directly benefit him, but still found issues with the ballot measure.

“More of that money has to go through our state government, and for a while now they haven’t been doing such an awesome job,” Rojas said. “So, are we going to trust them with more money to do what they say they’re going to do?”

With the new policies to be applied from Proposition 30, Pierce can only wait to see which camp is correct.

Health Center, spoke to his class about grief on Tuesday, the first class meeting after the memorial.

Benne arranged for there to be group and individual grief counseling with clinical phycologist PSY.D Niaz Khani starting at 5:30p.m. in the Student Health Center.