For the months of February and March, we've received and have fulfilled requests for campaign materials from the following states:

Idahoe
Ohio
Michigan
Minnesota

These requests came via Facebook, Campaign brochure tear-out mailing, direct email.

Each state contact received at least 2 kits with the largest request being 5 kits.

Each kit ships with:

100 CAC Brochures
100 Bracelets
100 Stickers
4 T-Shirst
100 "Getting Involved" B&W Flyer
100 "My Debt, My Life" NEA Today Article

The following request for CAC materials for the month of April:

Shipped or packed for staff distribution:

Events/Campuses:
Indiana State University
U of Maine (Greene)
U of Maine (Auburn)
Mark Smith (don’t remember the event—a regional event)

TOTALS
800 pamphlets, bracelets, stickers, Facebook/Myspace flyers
32 CAC T-shirts (various sizes)

CR Student Program worked with GR to produce version 3 of its College Affordability Campaign brochure.

Rather than GR creating their own commitment card for collecting names and email addresses to support their issues organizing campaign around college affordability, CR offered to merge GR's content with that of its College Affordability Campaign brochure’s mail-in commitment card.

The new brochure will debut and be promoted both by GR and CR at this year's Student Conference. We are planning give-away activities in an effort to engage student members to fill out the brochure's commitment card--both with their contact information and contact information of their friends.

[view new brochure]

College funding at center of Got Tuition?'s message
Group hopes to inform students on big issues

[view online]

The War in Iraq, Wall Street and renewable energy dominate the presidential candidate discourse and the public eye. One organization aims to refocus it.

Got Tuition?, a nonpartisan group owned and operated by the National Education Association, will be making a stop at Kent State Oct. 15. The group seeks to educate student voters about issues that affect them.

"We're trying to get people to say, 'I guess I should care about this, since it's my money,'" said Danielle Sherritt, chair of the Ohio Student Education Association, a branch of the NEA.

Got Tuition? will set up a booth outside the M.A.C. Center to pass out information about both presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.

"As college students, we have to be our own activists," said Sherritt, who is also a Kent State graduate student for gifted education. "Most people that have graduated from college pay off their loans, and then they really don't care."

Although Got Tuition? is nonpartisan, the NEA endorses Obama largely for his support of increasing Pell Grants. Obama co-sponsored a bill in 2007 that would have raised the maximum Pell Grant from $4,050 to $5,100.

President Lester Lefton said the availability and amount of Pell Grants should be one of the biggest issues for a student voter, though no one should vote based on a single issue.

"The most important thing that they can do at the federal level is to increase the Pell Grants," he said. "The working poor and their families are lacking in economic resources and need those Pell Grants to pay the first five or six grand of a student's bill."

Right now, the maximum Pell Grant award is $4,731, up about $700 from four years ago.