Starting Winter 2007, tuition will be dropped to $20 a unit from the current $26, announced ASGCC president David Arakelyan at Tuesday’s ASGCC meeting.

Arakelyan explained how the approval of the fee reduction may possibly solve low enrollment issues in the college.

“We, as a student association, represent students and do what we’re supposed to do,” said Arakelyan. “We want to make GCC affordable for everyone.”

Although this was a successful motion, the ASGCC legislature is still trying to push tuition costs down to $15 a unit. In order to do this, 5000 signatures are needed to petition the request.

Various committees within the student government legislature were encouraged to be active in the pursuit of lower tuition costs.
“This is something where you can make a difference on a larger scale,” said Student Activites Coordinator and Advisor Alen Andrassian. “This isn’t going to happen if you don’t put work into it.”

ASGCC’s special committee reported spending $179,000 on a new Web design for the school’s Web site. “It helps put the college out there,” says Arakelyan, hoping that this could be another solution to the low enrollment dilemma.

Syuzanna Petrosyan, vice president of finance, explained that $79,000 will be used to keep the website running, while the other $100,000 will go to making the website more attractive and will also add new languages on the site so that international students can understand it.

The committee is hopeful that these new changes will draw more students to choose to attend GCC.

The school also received the Title V grant for $2.9 billion paid out over 5 years.

Title V is aimed towards Hispanic-serving institutions, to help students still in high school by giving them a better college education experience. The goal is to help students under the grant to get through GCC in just two years and onto a four-year university.

The Campus Relations Committee is also planning to take a survey of what kind of food students would like to eat on campus. They are suggesting that the culinary department cook fresh food for students instead of opening up fast food restaurants in the cafeteria. “Maybe we can have fresh salads,” said Vice President of Administration Carolina Yernazian. There was also a proposition for the school cafeteria to start accepting ATM cards to make it easier for the students.

As the meeting came to a close, Vice President of Campus Activities Sevada Begijanyan read the “Quote of the Day.” The purpose of the “Quote” is to motivate the officers that make up the ASGCC legislative body as they prepare to carry out tasks that lay ahead.

Begijanyan read, “Accept the challenge so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”