By Kimi Fleming

The Higher Education Act (HEA), which dictates the federal government’s guidelines for higher education institutions and programs, has not been reauthorized since 2008, but the University of Maryland Student Government Association is aiming to change that.

The organization tabled outside of McKeldin Library Thursday for its “HEA Day of Action,” as part of a larger week of action, talking with students about the Higher Education Act and gathering signatures from reauthorization supporters.

SGA President Ireland Lesley and Director of Government Affairs Samay Kindra first had the idea for “HEA Week of Action” after attending the summer conference of the Association of Big Ten Students.

“I didn’t personally know [about the HEA] until I looked into it over the summer, just how important this single piece of legislation is in shaping higher education for every college student pretty much in the U.S.,” Kindra said.

The concept was simple: host tabling events to teach college students about the importance of the Higher Education Act and garner signatures to petition Congress to reauthorize the act. The campaign extended to all 14 Big Ten schools. 

“The world was substantially different 10 years ago, and so are our universities and students. As such, we demand that Congress take care to keep in mind what issues impact students of today,” the petition states.

Created in 1965, the Higher Education Act was initially formed to provide resources to college students, such as access to financial aid and subsidized grants, as well as continuing education programs, school libraries and more.

Congress has reauthorized the act eight times since its creation, but the last successful renewal occurred more than 10 years ago.

“We’ve come a long way in society and a lot of things have changed over the past couple of years…and so I think it’s really important that we advocate for these [policy changes], as it’s going to determine how policies are implemented at the University Maryland and other higher education institutions,” said Richa Dhamankar, the director of campus advocacy on SGA’s Civic and Governmental Affairs Committee and bill sponsor. 

SGA is focusing on four specific areas of the Higher Education Act. These include expanding Pell Grants, simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), keeping Title IX insulated from changes made by the Department of Education and mental health transparency.

“[It’s] really important because a lot of these things people don’t know about,” said Dhamankar. “They don’t know about mental health resources on campus. They don’t know that there’s a CARE center on campus…I think our first priority is to make these issues known.” 

Between all of the Big Ten schools, the campaign has reached more than 500,000 students. In just four hours of tabling, UMD SGA received nearly 200 signatures and 100 postcards to be sent to congressmen. The online petition, created by the Association of the Big Ten Students, has more than 450 of its 500-signature goal.

“We want to show [Congress] just how important this is to students and emphasize to them that this is really impactful for generations to come,” said Kindra. “So it’s really key to get it right this time around because we don’t know when it will come up again.”

Simon Sheaff, a representative for the university’s Graduate Student Government, said that their legislative body has also been advocating for the reauthorization of the HEA.

“We’ve had lots of great meetings with the University of Maryland government representative,” he said. “…We held an advocacy day where we trained people to think about how they can advocate for themselves at both the federal and state levels on issues exactly like the Higher Education Act.”

Now, student advocates are now looking toward the future.

“The next step after this is to sort of aggregate all the petitions and postcards that we have across all the different campuses after this week,” said Kindra, “see where we’re at and start reaching out to congressional offices that are key in making this happen and setting up meetings with them to show them the amount of support.”