What is MASSPIRG?
MASSPIRG is a statewide, student-directed organization that works to solve problems facing our society. Our environment and public health are threatened, students are being ripped off, poverty is on the rise, and our decision makers aren’t listening to ordinary citizens. MASSPIRG combines the idealism of students with the expertise of professional staff who conduct research, education, and grassroots organizing for the public.
What does MASSPIRG do?
We get results. This past fall, we helped register over 10,000 voters across the state and increased voter turnout by record numbers. This past July, we helped pass the Global Warming Solutions Act, which makes Massachusetts a leader in cutting our carbon emissions. And, a few days earlier, Congress approved the textbooks bill, which requires publishers to tell faculty what textbooks cost. In the fall of 07, we helped convince Congress to cut student loan interest rates in half. Last month, we helped secure an additional $15 billion in funding for Pell Grants.
How is MASSPIRG funded?
Students at UMass vote to fund MASSPIRG through an $11 per student per semester waiveable fee. Students at UMass have been a part of MASSPIRG since 1972, pooling together their resources statewide with other MASSPIRG chapters to hire staff, such as advocates and researchers and grassroots organizers, to work with them on issues that they care about. Students decide how best to spend their resources on the issues that they care about, such as fighting homelessness, cleaning our water ways, and working for more clean energy.
Why go to the ballot?
Students at UMass have been voting on funding MASSPIRG every two years since 1972 as a way to reaffirm student support for the work that we do. The mandate from the student community that says that UMass students want clean air, clean water, affordable tuition, and an end to poverty gives us the ammunition it takes to get our work done. By having students vote to fund MASSPIRG with a per student fee, we can count on those resources to keep doing our work in the future.
What are the priorities for the next few years?
We have the opportunity to make a huge impact on so many different issues in the next few years. We are going to be working on new ways to make higher education affordable through new grants and lower interest rates. We're fighting to lower the cost of textbooks. We're working to make sure that Massachusetts leads the way on addressing the problem of global warming, both through producing more renewable energy AND by having our college campuses lead the charge through good sustainability policies. We’re working to expand and increase public transportation across the country, including creating more light rail systems. We are working to make health care affordable and accessible for everyone. And we're working to alleviate hunger and homelessness in our community.
How does MASSPIRG spend the funding it receives?
We use it all to tackle Massachusetts' biggest problems and win positive reform for the state. When you look at the things we've done - protect 58.5 million acres of forests, ban the most dangerous pesticides from daycares and schools, clean up the air all across the country - it's pretty clear that this is money well spent. The staff we hire and the campaigns we run do take resources, and with the challenges facing Massachusetts and the rest of the country over the next few years, you can be sure that our staff and students will use these resources to stand up to the special interests and win. Our clean water, our land use protections, consumer and student rights - they all rely on our ability to hire a crack team of experts and professionals to fight for students.
Besides, polluting industries spend millions of dollars each year just on campaign contributions to elected officials (that doesn't include their lobbyists, their propaganda, their campaign ads, etc.), an $11 per student per semester fee is small change in comparison to what we're up against. That small change makes a big difference - they might spend tens of millions of dollars trying to avoid pollution regulations, but with the help of students here at UMass, and all across MA, we are able to protect our environment and public health. Student support gives us the opportunity to make a difference at the local, state and even national level.
Where is the money spent?
Off and on campus, but mostly it goes to wherever MASSPIRG's resources will make a difference on the issues that students care about. The whole point of establishing MASSPIRG is to be able to have the resources to hire a staff of professionals - attorneys, researchers, organizers, and advocates - to work with students to fight against the special interests wherever they are trying to pollute the environment, rip-off consumers, or corrupt the democratic process.
Why does MASSPIRG hire staff?
The problems that MASSPIRG undertakes are large, statewide, often national in scope. Staff are an important part of having an effective statewide organization. They bring expertise to student's ideas and continuity to long term student campaigns.
Do students in each chapter decide what issues to work on?
Students decide on the campaigns that they want to work on both locally and at the statewide level. Student can bring campaign ideas to the statewide board, where students from different chapters get together, to work on across the state. The problems that we face aren’t just local – everyone is fighting for affordable education, stopping global warming, and ending poverty across the state and the country.
Why does MASSPIRG work statewide?
The problems that Massachusetts faces do not only occur on campus. In order to clean up our waterways, protect our national forests or lower textbook prices our staff need to go to the decision makers all across the state and in Washington D.C. With statewide grassroots support as well as our staff tackling problems from Boston to the Berkshires, we are able to take on the special interests that create these problems and actually win for students and the public interest.
Why is it a waiveable fee and not an opt-in donation?
Students vote as a community to have a MASSPIRG chapter and to assess themselves a fee in order to have resources to effect greater change. By voting for the fee, UMass students are saying to each other that they feel it’s important that they, as students, have resources that enable them to make more of an impact on the important issues of our day. The community nature of the decision is significant because it ensures that there will be enough resources to make a difference. In an opt-in donation system, the overall effectiveness of each individual contribution is diminished because there is no group consensus that it is important to collect the resources, and therefore no guarantee that there will be enough resources to make a difference.
