I am a professor of Sociology and Criminology at Southern Connecticut State University. I spent the year incredibly impressed with my students’ work, their openness to thinking outside the box, and their enthusiasm for learning and planning their futures. But my most indelible impression from this first year is how these students devoted themselves to learning even as they were dealing with incredible pressure. When I taught in class about the proposed budget changes, students spoke about their stress and fear about what may come given the proposed legislative budget, what it means for higher education in our state, and most importantly what it would mean about their ability to stay in school at all.
