Tuition Equity – Memphis Flyer

Tennessee had the opportunity, on April 22nd, to join 22 forward-looking states by passing tuition equity, which would have benefited thousands of young people across the state. But a mysterious outbreak of myopia in the House chamber, moments before the bill came up for vote, defeated a nicely crafted Senate-passed bill that had strong support from Tennessee youth, educators, and immigrant-rights advocates.

The legislative push to secure tuition equity — which would have allowed in-state university tuition for undocumented youth — has been arduous. Legislators in Nashville have struggled to understand the ramifications of tuition equity in the context of stalled national immigration reform.

Ironically, the bill’s origin and defeat can be traced indirectly to persistent federal inaction on immigration policy.

Five years ago, the U.S. Senate voted down the “Dream Act,” a bill that would have created a path to residency and citizenship for undocumented youth in the U.S. The Senate’s failure to act essentially denied hundreds of thousands of teenagers the chance to pursue education beyond 12th grade. These youths were effectively assigned to the class of low-wage workers living in the U.S.A.

In response to congressional failure, President Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order in 2012. The order allows childhood arrivals who are pursuing or who have obtained a high school diploma to earn a temporary, renewable two-year immigration status. This frees these folks from fear of deportation and allows them to work and study legally in the U.S.

Some states, as a result of congressional inaction, have cobbled together legislation — sometimes called tuition equity — designed to support young people who hope to earn college degrees and embrace the American dream. Tuition equity can come in a variety of forms but generally means offering in-state tuition rates for undocumented youth who reside in the state and have graduated from the state’s high schools.

The Republican-controlled Tennessee state legislature came close to passing tuition equity in last week’s general session. The Senate recently passed it by a vote of 21-12. The House vote, 49-47, fell one vote short of a constitutional majority (50 votes) needed for passage. This vote divided the Republican ranks. For example, Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) did not vote but claims she would have voted against the bill because, to her, the bill represents a “slippery slope.”

We’re not sure which slope she’s sliding down, but opening up opportunity for more young people, as many as 25,000, to study at our state-supported universities seems more like a step-up. Her lack of leadership on this important initiative is worse than her uninspiring metaphors.

Others have led with conviction and grace: Carla Chávez spoke on April 7th before the Education Administration and Planning Committee. The young woman told of arriving in the U.S. at 5 years old with her parents. She never knew she was “undocumented” until it came time to apply to college. Carla graduated from McGavock High School in Nashville and gained eligibility to work with a work permit, as authorized through DACA. She worked at internships and studied on the side, preparing for college during her free time in the hopes that tuition equity would, one day, pass in Tennessee.

Chávez’s powerful statement had a therapeutic effect on some of our representatives. Kent Calfee (R-Kingston) described the moment as “an epiphany” because he was set to vote against the bill, but was swayed by Chávez.

Representative Johnnie Turner (D-Memphis) invoked the civil rights struggle during a moving, passionate speech.

Representative Mark White (R- Memphis) sponsored and shepherded the bill that ultimately fell short. He deserves credit for recognizing the moral imperative behind this legislation and the positive impact it would have in Tennessee. Last year, this same bill bitterly divided the state legislature and never made it out of committee. This year, a broad coalition led by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), Latino Memphis, Inc., and hundreds of students organized a bold campaign that, while not managing to provoke new legislation, still made significant progress.

In these times of seemingly interminable partisan bickering, we need a state legislature that leads and helps us all look to our better angels. Offering young people the opportunity to take command of their lives through education, dedication, and focused work is the right policy option for Tennessee. We hope the myopia recedes, just a little bit, in the next legislative session.

Over the course of time — and quite a lot recently — we have had much to say about the Tennessee General Assembly’s annual legislative value judgments (if that’s not too oxymoronic a term). More than once, we have

characterized them in cartoons as hillbillies (and that was if we were feeling kindly.)

That kind of rude jesting on our part had actually begun well before the state’s voting population began its pell-mell rush to the flag of Tea Party Republicanism. Since that happened, beginning with the election of 2008, more or less, and proceeding geometrically in that direction ever since, we have often been stupefied — uncertain as to how much further we could go with such ad hominem characterizations without being considered either too rabid or, worse, guilty of gross understatement.

We’re still a little buffaloed, frankly, as to how and why the Tennessee GOP was able to expand so far beyond its East Tennessee hinterland, where a relatively genteel and moderate version of Republicanism had flourished since the Civil War, as a result of the region’s hill-country pro-Unionism, and how and why the party’s philosophy had shifted so far rightward.

Our puzzlement was amplified by the fact that those original advances into Middle and West Tennessee (in the direction of what was then called a “two-party system”) were facilitated by Memphis’ own Lewis Donelson, a genteel presence whose protégés — office-holders like Howard Baker and Winfield Dunn and the early version of Lamar Alexander — were thoughtful additions to a thriving political debate that for some gave Tennessee the reputation of a bellwether state, one that could go back and forth between the two major parties in tune with shifts in the regional and national mood.

All that began careening to an end in 2008, more or less simultaneously with the election and then the administration of an African-American president. Or maybe that was just a coincidence. In any case, Tennessee is now, like the rest of the South, and in some ways more so, resolutely red, with only trace amounts of Democrats, mainly in Nashville and Memphis.

But we have come to praise the General Assembly, not to bury it. Granted, in the last session, there was yet another gratuitous firearms bill, which our well-intentioned but, er, gun-shy governor signed into law after pointing out concisely its more dangerous attributes. And there was the expected bill adding new anti-abortion restrictions to state law. Worst of all, there was the refusal to accept a badly needed Medicaid-expansion bill, largely because the word “Obamacare” was attached to it by opponents.

On the plus side, this Republican super-majority legislature refused for the third year in a row to devalue public education with a school-voucher bill, approved a halfway decent educational-standards measure, rejected a Bible-as-state-book bill that would have trashed the barrier between church and state, gave the concept of medical marijuana a fair hearing, and, arguably best of all, came within a single vote — that of an absent Democrat — of approving in-state tuition allowances for children of undocumented aliens, with a bill that is said to be sure of passage next year (see Viewpoint).

All things considered, this is progress. Maybe something like a normal political spectrum has reasserted itself within the confines of our one-party state. We are entitled to hope.