Red Deer College students want to tell the Alberta advanced education minister they don’t like how the cookie crumbles.

In a protest on Thursday at the Forum at the college, students expressed their concerns about reduced funding in the provincial budget for student grants and post-secondary institutions.

Their messages will be combined with messages from seven other post-secondary schools around the province and baked into a giant fortune cookie to be delivered to the advanced education minister as part of a protest organized by the Alberta Students’ Executive Council.

On Thursday, the Students’ Association of RDC was also passing out fortune cookies with the website www.albertastudents.ca/action, where people can get more information.

Steven Kwasny, RDC students’ association president, said they’ve seen the effect the economy and other cutbacks have had on students. “One of the biggest indictors we’ve been using is our student food bank. We’ve had a huge increase in demand for the student food bank to the point where for the first time, I think ever, we’ve had to inject money into it from the students’ association. In the past we went off donations,” he said.

He said with $54 million in cuts to scholarships and grants for students in the province, he fears it could get worse. In some cases, provincial funding has shifted so that instead of grants, students will have access to loans they have to repay.

It still isn’t clear what kind of cuts RDC may experience in government funding because the college hasn’t yet received a letter from the provincial government, said Jim Madder, executive vice-president academic at RDC. But he said RDC doesn’t plan to increase tuition more than 1.5 per cent next school year.

Jessica Hansen, an anthropology student, said students are already struggling to make ends meet and pay for tuition, books and living costs.

She said it isn’t fair for the government to cut funding and questioned how students can succeed when the government isn’t willing to give them a hand.

While waiting for her student loan to come through last school term, Hansen had to go to the student food bank to get by. She has looked for work, putting out 20 resumes, but had no luck.

“(With the government cutting funding) it makes it harder. It makes you not want to go (to college) because why struggle when you can go and work on the rigs. Why would you come to school and struggle?” Hansen said.

Joel Hurst, a first-year open studies student who plans to go into the theatre tech program, said he finds it sad that the government says it is investing in the future but continues to “steal” funding away from students, giving them less incentive to go to a post-secondary institution.

He said students create more ideas and new concepts, yet the government continues to take money away from them so they won’t come up with the ideas that will stimulate the economy now and into the future.

sobrien@reddeeradvocate.com