Rally touts CSN funding as investment in Nevada, students

Qiana Griffin is not your typical college student, as she admits.

She's 30. She has two children. She got little sleep Wednesday night between studying for a final exam and trying to put her 1-year-old, who is sick, to sleep. "It's hard, it's really hard," she said.

Yet, at the College of Southern Nevada, there are thousands of students in situations similar to hers. And Griffin is worried that she and other students will suffer should Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposed budget cuts go through.

On a cold, overcast day that happened to be the last day of final exams, CSN students managed to attract several dozen students for a rally against potential budget cuts.

The state's largest college, with 40,000 students, is also its most diverse, with about 44 percent of its enrollment minorities.

And those minority students could be hit hardest by an 8 percent cut Gibbons has proposed, CSN interim President Mike Richards said.

"Right now, higher education is a questionable priority in the mind of the governor," he told students and faculty.

Richards said the cuts could force the college to close its "learning sites," such as those on some high school campuses, restrict student services such as counseling and limit the number of classes the college offers.

After Richards and Regent Steve Sisolak spoke, the microphone was turned over to students in the audience.

One of those students, 36-year-old waitress Jennifer O'Donnel burst into tears when she talked about how college counselors have helped her through her classes on her third attempt at graduating from college.

She did so well in her courses this year that she's changing her major from psychology to a more mathematics- and biology-intensive psychiatry degree.

"This time, I want to make it. I want to finish college," she said.

CSN, like the three other community colleges in Nevada, trains students in vocational and occupational fields who mostly stay in the region.

Because of that, CSN is an investment for taxpayers, Richards said -- one that returns $3.60 in additional taxpayer revenue for every dollar it receives from the state.

Griffin, who, despite her other obligations is a student senator for the college's Cheyenne campus, held a sign that read, "Fund higher education or pay my welfare!!!"

She's studying to become a nurse, and she said she wouldn't be able to go to college without the scholarships she receives from the college.

"I want to provide a better future for my family," she said.