Accomplishments

Affordable Textbooks: The Connecticut State Legislature passed a bill requiring textbook publishers to make their prices available to faculty. Students at Trinity, UConn Hartford and UConn Storrs helped collect signatures and push the bill forward.

Hunger and Homelessness: In addition to service events and food drives, ConnPIRG students raised over $20,000 to help local shelters and service agencies keep operating.

Campus Climate Challenge: Trinity College students convinced the building and grounds department to donate 150 compact fluorescent light bulbs, which ConnPIRG distributed to students while educating them about simple ways to conserve energy. ConnPIRG students at Trinity also held educational events about wind power and clean cars. They used these events to collect signatures for a call to action, which insisted that Trinity needed to step up and make sustainability a top priority.

Higher Education: In 2007, ConnPIRG worked with a national coalition to convince the U.S. House of Representatives to pass HR 5, which would cut in half the interest rate on student loans.  The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, by a vote of 356 to 71.  The bill would lower interest rates over five years on subsidized Stafford student loans, which are used overwhelmingly by students from low- and middle-income families.  This would save the average low or middle-income borrower starting school in 2007 $2,300 in debt.

New Voters Project: After an effort to register and turn out voters by ConnPIRG through the national, non-partisan New Voters Project, the turnout from the polling place near the UConn Storrs campus was amongst the highest in the country. Nationally, the increase in youth voter turnout was four times the rate of the general population’s increase (4% for youth, 1% overall). The result was widely praised as one of the best youth turnouts in Mansfield.