Say Anything Blog

Arizona recently passed Prop 300 that denied benefits to illegals and enforced stricted employer sanctions.  Liberals and Academics decided to thwart the will of the voters and instead used private funds from ASU’s donors (of which I am one) to pay for scholarships for illegals that lost their financial aid due to the law.  Well, those days are over:

A controversial scholarship which benefited Arizona State University students who are in the country illegally has quietly faded away.  As many as 200 students who graduated from Arizona high schools received the private scholarship money through the university this year.

But now the money is spent, and ASU is advising students who depended on it to “seek private funding sources.”

The scholarships were a response to Proposition 300, a voter-approved law that requires illegal immigrants to pay the out-of-state tuition rate at the state’s public universities and colleges.  The proposition also prohibits those students from receiving any type of financial assistance that is funded with taxpayer money.

In September, ASU President Michael Crow, said the university was helping students with private money already in the school’s coffers. Based on Crow’s estimate that 150-200 students would receive the aid, the total amount disbursed was approximately $1.8 million…

ASU will provide a list of private funding sources for interested students. Included on the list are some sources that do not take citizenship status into consideration of scholarships and grants.

State Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, is thrilled ASU will no longer be providing money to these students.

“The university should never have been complicit in bypassing the will of the voters,” Kavanagh said. Prop. 300 passed in 2006 with the support of nearly seven of 10 . “They were given tuition breaks to illegal immigrants.”

I am an alum of ASU (Go Devils).  I voted for Prop 300 along with 70% of Arizonans.  And to have Michael Crow and the academics give me the middle finger after I not only donate to the scholarship funds, serve on the board of directors of my college’s alumni association, and pay his salary just pisses me off.  I like President Crow, but this was just plain out and out disrespect for citizens that do not share his enlightened view.  He is by no means a Liberal, but he is an academic all the same.  Already, the law has been attacked by outright legal challenges, but these sort of underhanded backdoor challenges by government agencies intent to ignore the will of the people are among the most blatant abuses of government power possible.

Ironicly, Ellinas was chastizing me today about using student loan and grant proceeds as a down payment on my first home:

Student loans to buy a house? Wow that is a novel way to buy a house. So more than likely you lied on your applications as to the purpose of the loans. You are beneath contempt.

But if I received the funds and sent them home to mi madre y padre en Mexico, things would be cool.  What an odd contrast in appropriate use of school funds.