ConnPIRG FAQ
What is ConnPIRG?
ConnPIRG is a statewide, student-directed organization that works to solve
problems facing our society. Our environment and public health are threatened,
students are being ripped off, poverty is on the rise, and our decision makers
aren’t listening to ordinary citizens. ConnPIRG combines the idealism of
students with the expertise of professional staff who conduct research,
education, and grassroots organizing for the public.
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What does ConnPIRG do?
We get results. Last year, ConnPIRG staff and students helped pass the first
ever textbooks legislation, which requires textbook publishers to disclose the
prices and options to professors before they make their purchasing decisions.
This bill is the first step to making textbooks more affordable for students.
Here at Trinity, ConnPIRG is working hard to make Trinity more sustainable
by educating about global warming solutions – last fall we showcased a car that
gets 150 mpg and gave out free solar-heated hot chocolate – and encouraging the
whole campus community to make changes that will reduce the amount of global
warming pollution we’re emitting – we hold regular light bulb swaps and are
working with the administration to adopt campus wide sustainability policies.
ConnPIRG students at Trinity also work on hunger and homelessness issues in Hartford through direct
service and awareness events. Last semester as part of Hunger and Homelessness
Awareness Week, we partnered with Amnesty to host an Oxfam Hunger Banquet and we also hosted a Faces of Homelessness
Panel where currently and formerly homeless people told their stories to the
campus community.
Additionally, ConnPIRG students at Trinity and across the state have
organized to bring the issue of Student Debt to the top of Congress’ priority
list, and this January the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to cut
student loan interest rates in half over the next five years.
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How is ConnPIRG funded?
Students at Trinity vote to fund ConnPIRG through a $5 per student per semester
waivable fee. Students at Trinity have been a part of ConnPIRG since 1974,
pooling their resources together statewide with other ConnPIRG chapters to hire
staff, such as researchers and grassroots organizers, to work with them on
issues that they care about. Students decide how best to spend their resources
on the issues that they care about, such as fighting homelessness, increasing
voter turnout, and working for more clean energy. This year students at
Trinity will be voting to reaffirm the fee.
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Why go to the ballot?
Students at Trinity have been voting on funding ConnPIRG every two years as a
way to reaffirm student support for the work that we do. The mandate from the
student community that says that Trinity students want clean air, clean water,
affordable tuition, and an end to poverty gives us the ammunition it takes to
get our work done. By having students vote to fund ConnPIRG with a per student
fee, we can count on those resources to keep doing our work in the future.
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What are the priorities for the next few years?
There are constantly attacks on laws that protect our environment or consumers;
and unfortunately those bringing the attacks have a lot of money and
influence. ConnPIRG is working both on a state and federal level to
protect good laws that are on the books so that we don’t roll back decades of
progress that has been made.
But we're not just playing defense. We're working on new ways to make higher
education affordable through new grants and lower interest rates. We're still
fighting to lower the cost of textbooks. We're working to make sure that Connecticut leads the
way on addressing the problem of global warming, both through producing more
renewable energy AND by having our college campuses lead the charge through
good sustainability policies. And we're working to alleviate hunger and
homelessness in our community.
And looking ahead to 2008, we’ll be mobilizing thousands of college students
all over Connecticut
to make sure that politicians continue paying more attention to young
people. Turnout has been on the rise amongst college students over the
last couple of elections and we aim to keep it that way so that our nation’s
leaders know that young people are a force to be reckoned with.
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How does ConnPIRG spend the funding it receives?
We use it all to tackle Connecticut’s
biggest problems and win positive reform for the state. When you look at the
things we've done - protecting the state’s farmland, cleaning up Long Island
Sound, bringing cleaner cars to the state, and making college tuition and
textbooks more affordable - it's pretty clear that this is money well spent.
The staff we hire and the campaigns we run do take resources, and with the
challenges facing Connecticut and the rest of the country over the next few
years, you can be sure that our staff and students will use these resources to
stand up to the special interests and win. Our clean water, our land use
protections, consumer and student rights - they all rely on our ability to hire
a crack team of experts and professionals to fight for students.
Besides, polluting industries spend millions of dollars each year just on
campaign contributions to elected officials (that doesn't include their
lobbyists, their propaganda, their campaign ads, etc.), a $5 fee every semester
is small change in comparison to what we're up against. That small change makes
a big difference - they might spend tens of millions of dollars trying to avoid
pollution regulations, but with the help of students here at Trinity, we are
able to protect our environment and public health. Student support gives us the
opportunity to make a difference at the local, state and even national level.
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Where is the money spent?
Off and on campus, but mostly it goes to wherever ConnPIRG’s resources will
make a difference on the issues that students care about. The whole point of
establishing ConnPIRG is to be able to have the resources to hire a staff of
professionals - attorneys, researchers, organizers, and advocates - to work
with students to fight against the special interests wherever they are trying
to pollute the environment, rip-off consumers, or corrupt the democratic
process.
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Why does ConnPIRG hire staff?
The problems that ConnPIRG undertakes are large, statewide, often national in
scope. Staff are an important part of having an effective statewide
organization. They bring expertise to student's ideas and continuity to long
term student campaigns.
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Do students in each chapter decide what issues to work on?
Students decide on the campaigns that they want to work on both locally and at
the statewide level. Student can bring campaign ideas to the statewide board,
where students from different chapters get together, to work on across the
state. The problems that we face aren’t just local – everyone is fighting
poverty, environmental destruction, and for affordable education across the
state and the country.
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Why does ConnPIRG work statewide?
The problems that ConnPIRG faces do not only occur on campus. In order to clean
up our waterways, protect our national forests or lower textbook prices our
staff need to go to the decision makers all across the state and in Washington D.C.
With statewide grassroots support as well as our staff tackling problems from Storrs to Stamford,
we are able to take on the special interests that create these problems and
actually win for students and the public interest.
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Why is it an opt-out fee and not an opt-in donation?
Students vote as a community to continue to assess themselves a fee in order to
have resources to effect greater change. By voting for the fee, Trinity
students are saying to each other that they feel it’s important that they, as
students, have resources that enable them to make more of an impact on the
important issues of our day. The community nature of the decision is
significant because it ensures that there will be enough resources to make a
difference. In an opt-in donation system, the overall effectiveness of
each individual contribution is diminished because there is no group consensus
that it is important to collect the resources, and therefore no guarantee that
there will be enough resources to make a difference.
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If I want to opt out of the fee, how do I do that?
Any student who does not with ConnPIRG to receive their $5 per semester can go
to the business office and request to have their ConnPIRG fee reallocated to
the general Student Activities Fund (SAF). This must be done by the 8th week
of the semester in order for it to take effect.
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My question wasn’t on here – where do I go to find
out more?
The ConnPIRG office is located in the FACES Lounge in the basement of Mather
Hall, right across from the Cave Café.
You can stop by the office or contact the Katie Kleese, the Campus
Organizer by phone: 860-297-3510 or email: katie@connpirgstudents.org, or
just ask any member of ConnPIRG! You can
also feel free to stop by any of our meetings.
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