If you’ll recall, Saturday was a rainy day. Most students were indoors avoiding the weather, but a few dozen instructors rallied on the Parade Ground to protest the tax policies that have led to the devastating budget cuts facing the University. They were trying to gather signatures for their petition to reform the way the state government receives funding and the way that funding is distributed to the various state agencies. The current structure of the state budget is outrageously unfair. Because higher education and health care are largely deemed discretionary spending – and because everything else in the budget is considered non-discretionary funding – these two departments get gutted whenever hard financial times require cuts. Translated from arcane bureaucratic lingo, this simply means higher education and health care are considered less important than the rest of the budget – and thus get unfairly slashed when the cuts come to the state. That’s right, University students. Your educations are considered unnecessary and worth being gutted. The instructors’ complaints are absolutely valid. The current budget system is unfair and detrimental to students, instructors and the state as a whole. The problem is reforming the system isn’t as easy as our elected officials might like. Because the primary issues with funding allocations are constitutional, changing them requires a significant amount of effort and a vote by the citizens of the state. Many legislators point to these political hurdles as evidence that restructuring the budget is politically unfeasible. In other words, our elected officials loathe reforming the system because doing so would be difficult. The other argument against trying to reform the system is that the reforms won’t affect the system in time to prevent more cuts in the immediate future. This argument is absolutely irresponsible.’ It’s the duty of our leaders to look to the future and prevent the crisis we are currently experiencing from occurring again. We call upon our governor, Bobby Jindal, and all the members of the Louisiana legislature to focus their efforts on reforming the system. Last legislative session, a bill that would have fixed most of these problems died in committee, signalling either political wheeling and dealing or simple lack of effort. This session, our government cannot repeat that irresponsible mistake. Governor Jindal must use all the power he has to push the legislature into reforming the system. It has to get done – even if it’s hard and even if it won’t help our legislators’ immediate political careers. —- Contact the Editorial Board at [email protected]