Accomplishments
New Voters Project: During the 2004 election, Arizona PIRG
volunteers registered more than 5,000 students to vote and contacted
thousands of students to make sure they voted on Election Day. That
effort helped to increase young voter turnout by 17 percentage points
in 2004 compared to the 2000 election.
Affordable Textbooks: Arizona PIRG’s Affordable Textbooks
campaign documented practices within the textbook industry that drive
up textbook prices, and worked with over 700 mathematics and physics
faculty members from 150 universities to press a major publisher to
amend its practices. The publisher has since announced a new line of
low cost books. Arizona PIRG also launched an online bookswap to help
students find cheap used books.
Higher Education: Arizona PIRG’s Student Debt Alert campaign
works to raise awareness about the growing problem of student debt and
call for solutions. Through the campaign, hundreds of students posted
their photos and stories on the Student Debt Yearbook, to illustrate to
decision makers the importance of financial aid programs. Hundreds of
additional students sent testimony to the federal Commission on the
Future of Higher Education urging them to address student debt issues. In 2007, Arizona PIRG worked with a national coalition to convince the
U.S. House of Representatives to pass HR 5, which would cut in half the
interest rate on student loans. The bill passed with overwhelming
bipartisan support, by a vote of 356 to 71. The bill would lower
interest rates over five years on subsidized Stafford student loans,
which are used overwhelmingly by students from low- and middle-income
families. This would save the average low or middle-income borrower
starting school in 2007 $2,300 in debt.
Clean Energy: Arizona PIRG students collected hundreds of
comments to the Arizona Corporate Commission, which regulates the
state’s power utilities, urging them to require that more of our energy
come from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar power.
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