Contact: Sabrina Schimscheimer: [email protected]
Who We Are:
MASSPIRG is a statewide, student-directed, non-partisan, & non-profit organization. For over 45 years, students on college campuses across MA have worked alongside professional organizers and advocates to create a more meaningful future. We believe that college students don’t need to wait until graduation to make an impact – and that’s why we mobilize students to get involved by running grassroots campaigns that make concrete social change. We work on a variety of issues such as protecting the environment and public health, reducing the cost of higher education, increasing youth participation in elections, and alleviating poverty.
The thing that makes us so effective is that students here at BCC vote to fund MASSPIRG through an $9 per student, per semester waivable fee. We pool these resources statewide to hire professional staff like lawyers, advocates, and organizers. We work together to run local and statewide campaigns, and they fight on behalf of the students full-time where key decisions are being made on Beacon Hill and in Washington DC.
| Learn more about the MASSPIRG fee at Berkshire Community College here! |
Current Campaigns:
Recent Highlights:
Fighting Hunger On Campus: Last semester, more than 1,000 students took action on our campaign to pass Hunger-Free Campus legislation and help end student hunger. We held a statewide lobby day with our friends at the Hunger Free Campus Coalition to support the bill and turned out over 60 students and community activists. In just one day, we met with over 30 legislative offices and got FIVE legislators to co-sponsor the Hunger Free Campus bill. And we celebrated a victory when Governor Healey signed the annual budget which included $1 million for the initiative!
Making Textbooks Affordable: We recently released our 21st report on textbook affordability, titled “Open Textbooks: The Billion Dollar Solution” to call for more free open textbooks in classrooms. We worked with State Representative Mindy Domb to introduce a bill to fund OER resources in the state. And during Open Education Week, we held an online panel discussion on successful OER strategies with the MA Department of Education, Representative Domb, the UMass Amherst library, and our partners at SPARC.
