Closing in on 1000......

THATS RIGHT- 888 Signatures and counting!


Members of the SOS Project Action team have been in the breezeway collecting signatures for our new Legislative Petition. Among the signatures are President Brogan and Tony Teixeira (The SGA President). The petition is addressed to both Marco Rubio, the Speaker of the House and Ken Pruitt, the Senate President. We have requested that it be read during Legislative session and entered into public record. Here's what we had to say...

Dear Senator Pruitt,

A few weeks ago, we—the concerned students at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton—hosted the largest student-initiated rally in our university’s history to raise awareness among our fellow students regarding the proposed budget cuts affecting our higher education, as well as sending a message to our state legislators about the importance of “S.O.S.”: Saving Our School. Now, we are sending you a different kind of “SOS”, as we are writing to request that you share this letter of petition with your colleagues in the Florida House of Representatives, and that it be entered into public record for all Floridians to see. Speaker Rubio, please act as our voice to your fellow Legislators.

We urge you as Legislators to preserve state funding of the State University System to the utmost of your ability. It is understandable that budget cuts must occur due to the cycles of our economy, but certain areas of the State budget should be preserved for the overall good of the Florida people who the Legislature represents. Through our intensive research, we have found that graduates of Florida schools are more likely to stay in the State, thus contributing to the overall state economy in the long run. We’ve also learned that experts suggest that the quality of a state’s public university system is a direct projection of the future of the economy for that state as a whole. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the tri-county area of Southeast Florida where we attend Florida Atlantic University.

Florida Atlantic University is made up of one of the most widely diverse student bodies in the United States, containing students of all ages, ethnicities, religions, cultures and general walks of life. Only on very few college campuses will you see a recent high school graduate studying for an exam with a recent retiree and a stay-at-home mom who has returned to finish her degree while her own children attend school—and FAU is proud to teach these traditional and non-traditional students alike. Together, if we are able to keep the access to higher education open to a wider group of people, this will help to break cycles of poverty and lack of education within the great state of Florida.

As a whole, the State University System is essential to the overall success of Florida. Please take the seriousness of this matter—and the hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and members of the community who have signed our petition—into consideration when making any final decision regarding the State's higher education budget.

Respectfully,
The Founding Students of the SOS Project at FAU