Nancy Ceja
Staff Writer
FAFSA: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Every college student has seen it, done it and maybe resent it. It is a part of modern college culture. You can’t get in without filling one out.
With the recent government shutdown ending, it seemed families, organizations and businesses were suffering from the effects it had left in the past month. Usually, students and financial aid are safe in these types of situations, but that may not have been the case if the shutdown were to have continued any longer.
With high school seniors and their FAFSA applications, government-funded students, or even their jobs, college attendees were beginning to feel the impact.
As the shutdown started right when the spring semester began (and just prior to the upcoming FAFSA deadline), and FAFSA is a government-run program for students, not only were federal loans and grants at possible risk, but some students’ jobs and whole lifestyles were walking on thin ice.
Financial aid is a bumpy road. Most likely some of us have felt the fear of probably not getting enough money with grants and loans when August rolls around or even going as far as watching your account for months to see if it actually processed. It’s a faulty system, but we all live through it for the sake of education.
Upcoming first-year students were the ones at the most risk with getting their financial aid. If they filled it out prior to the government shutdown, they were at no risk, but since some high schools were helping their seniors make their FAFSA before the upcoming deadline, they couldn’t get the required tax documents since the IRS was closed at the time.
Luckily, some individuals were helping current and future college students find alternate documentation to help in any way, but it sadly wasn’t going to guarantee anything for the future.
Students who were on a federally funded grant were no longer getting their money for research and education either. This wasn’t affecting every student who had a grant, but those who were experiencing the effects were possibly postponing graduation and even further academic pursuits.
Students didn’t have access to funds, research sites and even basic necessities for their day-to-day life. They were stuck until the government decided to run again.
A college student with some sort of job is not unheard of, especially if it’s full-time. Some students who are working for the government to pay for their livelihood were greatly feeling their very lives at a halt. These people were not on any paid vacation or leave the past month. They were stuck with possibly having no money and no access to food and money for paying bills and textbooks if they didn’t buy them beforehand. It makes sense that Benny’s Pantry has seen a much larger increase of student traffic than any year before.
Hopefully, things should begin to change for the better. Not only for the people who work for the government, but also for every other individual that was hurt in some way from this disaster. Even though the “opening” of the government is considered temporary for the time being, let’s hope we won’t have to continue the nation’s longest government shutdown in history.
