This past weekend Wesleyan was visited by two of our leaders in Washington, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Senator Richard Blumenthal. Our representative in the House stopped by briefly to talk with our Trustees about threats to the financing of education, and Connecticut’s new senator was a featured speaker at a rally on campus in support of Planned Parenthood. Although their topics seemed very different, by the end of the weekend I began to think they were in fact closely intertwined.
Rep DeLauro has long been a friend of the university, and Wesleyan awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2007. She serves in the Democratic leadership as co-chair of the Steering and Policy Committee, and she is the ranking member on the Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, where she oversees our country’s investments in education, health, and employment. She stopped here on her way to a series of events at which she discussed the effects on Connecticut citizens of the budget cuts proposed by the House.
She reminded us that these cuts would reduce the maximum Pell Grants, monies that go to the neediest students. Wesleyan would lose more than $1 million of Federal support for our students least able to afford a college education. Our Upward Bound and AmeriCorps funding for low-income and first-generation students would also be dramatically cut. Rep. DeLauro, like me a first generation college graduate, emphasized that these reductions in support would further compromise the ability of our educational system to be a vehicle for cultural and economic mobility. Without financial aid, elite schools just reproduce a static status quo. Education is an investment in the future, and undermining this investment is a counterproductive way to reduce government spending.
Senator Blumenthal is a newcomer to Washington, but he is already becoming an important figure in the defense of health care for women and families. He and the other speakers at the Planned Parenthood rally spoke eloquently about the importance of reproductive rights. Student organizers of the rally – including Susanna Banks ‘12, Zak Kirkwood ‘12, Alex Ketchum ’12, Elijah Meadow ‘13 and Hannah Adams ’13 – did a great job of bringing together hundreds of men and women to demand access to quality information and health care with regards to sexuality, birth control and parenthood. One in five women in the country use Planned Parenthood’s services at some point in their lives. Cancer screenings, STI testing, accurate information…these are just some of the essential services offered by Planned Parenthood. Sen. Blumenthal pledged to fight in its defense with “every fiber of his being,” and he praised students for “showing America what it means to stand up for American values in the 21st century.”
How are the cuts to education and to women’s health care related? Some would say by an urge to reduce the budget deficit that threatens our economic future. But even if you think that deficit reduction is a priority, these cuts are cultural and political choices, not just economic necessities. And these particular choices would reduce the social and economic mobility of vulnerable members of our society. The attack on education for low-income families and on low-cost health care for women would limit the abilities of these people to direct their lives – to change their lives, if they so desire.
That’s why as a university president I think it important to speak out on these cuts. I usually try to avoid overtly partisan public stands, but this assault on financial aid and health care for women is an assault on what we are trying to provide our students year in and year out: the possibility of transformation through education. There is still time to reach out to our friends, neighbors and elected officials in Washington to let them know what we stand for. Don’t let Congress undermine our future by limiting our capacities for learning and health.
President Roth, how is the university’s demand, in our last negotiations, to increase the secretarial and clerical workers’ insurance premiums beyond affordability not also an attach on women’s health care, impacting the most vulnerable on campus? The university was insistent three years ago, before the economic crisis, that we must pay the same as anyone else on campus–and when we could not afford to do so, many of us dropped off the plan, and are either uninsured or relying on a state program that is also slated to be cut. Yes, we hope the Rep. Delauro and others prevail in funding Planned Parenthood, because if they don’t, we will soon have nowhere to go for quality health care. We are not compelled to wait for negotiations and hope to improve this dire situation as of 1/1/12. We can fix this outside of the contract, and we have said so since last fall. Yet no one in the administration has met with us even once to discuss the issue. After many years of service to this community, we are more vulnerable than ever, and we, just like the people you applaud in this piece, demand access to quality health care for ourselves and our families. When you think about it, these issues really are closely intertwined.