Monday was a good day for the student body.Student Government’s Fund Our Future March gave students a great opportunity to see and speak to their legislators face-to-face. And initial reactions from those legislators are encouraging.SG deserves credit for organizing the protest. And we commend all the students who took the time to attend.That said, this is just the beginning. The battle for LSU’s budgetary future is by no means anywhere close to finished. The stakes are too high for anyone interested in the University’s future to remain quiet this legislative session.Gov. Bobby Jindal’s current plans for the session will do a lot to ease the pressures on LSU, but those plans have no concrete effects unless the legislature actually implements them. And the chances of that happening are significantly diminished if legislators aren’t getting feedback saying they should be pursuing these policies.That’s where you come in.Students need to begin actively petitioning legislators to stop giving higher education the ax while other programs get scraped with a file. Call, e-mail or send a letter to your legislator telling him or her to remove the constitutional and statutory protections on the other parts of the budget that cause our disproportionate fiscal pains.The current system is unfair and unwise — and our legislators need to be loudly told to fix it.Keep informed. SG, the administration and The Daily Reveille are all committed to keeping students in the loop. Pay attention for later organizational efforts to get the word out. Everyone on campus has been hearing about these cuts for almost a year now. We’re all tired of hearing about how our class sizes will increase, our professors will leave, our scheduling will become a mess and our resources will shrink.But Monday marked the beginning of the legislative session that will decide our funding for the next year, and it’s officially crunch time.Pay attention. Get involved. It’s your education that’s up for debate, and it’s your responsibility to make sure it retains its quality.
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