The Student Action Team head to Springfield April 14 to lobby for different student issues including the Monetary Award Program grant, performance funding and prompt money allocation.

The group said it hopes the legislatures will vote for the MAP grant and performance funding.

Christy Anderson, student executive vice president, commented on the legislatures votes.

“We hope (the legislatures) will vote for what the students want,” Anderson said.

According to Eastern’s financial aid website, the MAP grant is a need-based grant given to Illinois students and families that can range anywhere from $300 to $4,968 in aid money. This money does not need to be paid back. Nearly a fourth of campus receives this grant.

“Funding is one of the most important things students rely on,” Anderson said.

Along with lobbying for the MAP grant, students will also lobby for performance-based funding. This comes from two bills, one in the House and one in the Senate, that change the way colleges are funded, said Derek Markley, special assistant to the president.

The House bill, which was written and co-sponsored by Chapin Rose, “implements annual performance based funding” that would go into effect by 2013, Markley said.

Part of the bill would create “outcome” indicators that would help determine how much money a school received. It would allow for collaboration between not only the Illinois Board of Higher Education, but also representatives from universities and colleges across the state, Markley said.

“It would not be just something the board did,” he said.

The bill would also allow for the indicators to be different for each university depending on factors in the university including the mission statement and type of university, Markley said.

“You can’t use the same outcome indicators for each university,” Markley said. “It’s kind of a comparing apples to apples thing.”

Markley said Eastern would fare well using this system.

“We believe Eastern has a very good educational outcome,” Markley said.

In order to lobby for these issues, Anderson said SAT will hold a letter writing campaign next week. This campaign will allow students to write to their representatives, wherever they are registered to vote.

Anderson said they could go to the representatives at home.

She said this is to put a greater variety in which legislatures are written to which could increase the number of votes in the House and Senate.

The SAT will take these letters to Springfield on April 14.

During the day in Springfield, students will have from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to talk to legislatures by catching them coming out of the house, pulling them from the house or catching them in their offices. They will give legislators the letters from the campaign and a sheet that has the SAT’s legislative agenda, Anderson said.

This last campaign took place in the spring of 2010, when Eric Wilber, former executive vice president and chair of SAT, led students to try to get legislatures to fund the MAP grant. The lobbying was successful as the grant was fully funded.

Wilber said part of what made it successful, along with the letter writing campaign, is what this year’s SAT is already doing.

“I really think they need to link up with other schools,” Wilber said.

Wilber recommends students who do attend the lobbying day in Springfield to “have fun with it.”

“It’s a long day, but it’s a great learning experience,” he said.

Students who are still interested in going need to attend the next two meetings of the SAT, which meets at 7 p.m. every Monday in the Shelbyville Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Courtney Bruner can be reached at 581-7942 or at cbbruner@eiu.edu