Alumni from the California State University’s 23 campuses met at the Sacramento Convention Center today to lobby the state Legislature on behalf of the CSU system.

More than 150 alumni from around the state took part in the CSU’s annual Alumni Legislative Day. The event is designed to let CSU alumni meet with state lawmakers to address the needs and concerns of the university system.

As part of the program, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed delivered a state of the CSU address to the participants. The alumni were then briefed on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $386 million proposed cuts to the CSU system, which is the main focus of this year’s lobbying efforts.

In his address, Reed highlighted several talking points for the alumni as they lobbied, noting that the CSU has become a national model for other universities in a number of areas.

Reed said that the CSU system has become a national model for other universities in a number of areas including strategic planning and accountability, outreach to the K-12 public school system, outreach to underrepresented students and the university’s “Troops to College” program.

Attendees were also told to focus on the CSU as an investment in California and that failing to adequately fund the CSU would create a crisis in the state by reducing the number of nurses, teachers, engineers, criminal justice personnel and social workers the system produces each year.

To illustrate the point of how deep the proposed budget cuts to the system would be, the alumni were told that the combined campus budgets for CSU Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Maritime Academy, Monterey Bay, San Marcos, Sonoma and Stanislaus total approximately $313 million.

Alumni were also encouraged to continue the fight against the cuts when they returned home by enlisting friends, neighbors and colleagues to join the effort.

Sacramento State alumnus Lionel Rawlins, who graduated with a master’s degree in criminal justice in 1994, said he thought it was important to take part in lobbying the Legislature because the budget cuts and fee increases to the CSU system are unfair to students. He is also worried that the cuts will affect access to the university system for minority students the most.

As a criminologist, Rawlins believes that the state’s prison system should be managed more efficiently in order to free up money that could be invested in higher education. Rawlins said the state should only be incarcerating those criminals who pose a real threat to society, and put on probation and fine nonviolent offenders such as tax evaders.

“I know you don’t normally hear this from a criminologist,” Rawlins said, “but you could take the $10,000 a year it costs to keep a tax evader in prison and use that money to educate a kid.”

Sac State alumna Jeanie Esajian, who graduated in 2000 with a master’s degree in communication studies, said that she saw the event as an opportunity to tell legislators about the importance of the CSU.

“Without the CSU, the state would not be the economic powerhouse that it is,” Esajian said.

Esajian received Sac State’s 2008 Alumni Advocate of the Year award at the event for her service to Sac State and the CSU system.

“Taking part in the alumni legislative day is part of giving back as an alumna to show appreciation of what I have received as a student and taking the opportunity to advocate for my alma mater,” Esajian said.

Todd Wilson can be reached at [email protected].