Last weekend the University of North Carolina Association of Student Governments met in Greensboro on the campuses of North Carolina A&T and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

While the ASG had other business and legislation to handle, the weekend culminated with the collection of well over 22,000 signatures protesting the $200 tuition increase the North Carolina General Assembly has put in place.

The petition states that each signee opposes the 8 percent ($159.52) tuition increase currently included in the 2010-2011 state budget, because the current increase exceeds the tuition increase cap. 

Furthermore, if the N.C. General Assembly cannot repeal the increase, petitioners request that all money raised through the tuition increase stays within the individual university budget, instead of the State budget.

“I’m feeling really good, we’re pushing around 21,900 signatures as of right now,” ASG President and North Carolina Central University Law student T. Greg Doucette said.

Doucette, along with the other officers, are still counting signatures, and he says he is confident that ASG has far more than 22,000. “I think the Board of Governors is already very impressed with the amount of signatures. This gives them ammunition to push GA to repeal the $200 increase.”

Doucette described the total as “two A&T’s” worth of students.

Vice President of Internal Affairs Valerie Dudley says that she is extremely proud of the role A&T played in the petition. Considering A&T’s size to other institutions, she says A&T was critical in the total. A&T was responsible for about 1,800 of the 22,000 signatures.

“I’m so excited just because we can see how the students really care about themselves. That is over 10 percent of the student body and those signatures were captured in just two weeks,” Dudley said.

“It was good to see that students were involved in the actual SGA process. For the population we have as far as our students, and the percentage of signatures, we had a larger ratio than some other larger schools. UNC Wilmington had about 2400 signatures, and they are significantly larger than us.”

The impact of this petition has yet to be seen, but ASG seems confident that this will be a large tool for getting the GA to work with the BOG in allowing the institutions to repeal the $200 increase, and allow the schools to keep the money instead of pumping it into the state budget.

Doucette says that the proposed increase, if not repealed, would be a major loss to students, and that the increase signaled a return back to the politics of the early 2000s, when the G.A. used tuition to balance the budget.

“You have about 22,000 students, which breaks down to about 44,000 parents, represented in this petition,” Doucette said. “That’s over 60,000 voters speaking out for hundreds of thousands more.”

While the petition signing period may be over as of now, the movement itself is not.  Dudley says more action will be coming.

“I just want everyone to keep their eyes peeled there are more things coming as far as this tuition petition is concerned,” Dudley said. “Some more things are in the works, and I definitely appreciate the students becoming active in their governmental process.”

• Dexter R. Mullins