Welcome back to another exciting semester at a state university, where students wait for grants to feed and house themselves one year and worry about a full-scale faculty strike the next year.

If you were missing the fun from last year’s budget impasse, do not worry, more fun is on the way. By the end of September professors and coaches may be on the picket line, and you will have days or even weeks of dramatic joy.

Members of the Association of Pennsylvania’s State College and Universities Faculties (APSCUF) have been working without a contract for more than 425 days, and come mid-September they may vote to walk out of the classroom and not come back until they negotiate a new contract.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) is busy creating its strike-response plan to help students wait out a potential strike. After all, with more than 14 months of disagreements of salaries, healthcare plans and job duties, there is no telling how long a strike could last.

Though, like the budget impasse, a strike will directly impact the lives of tens of thousands of students, APSCUF and PASSHE both said they have the best interest of the students in mind.

“It is completely unfair to our students for the state system to continue to drag this process out,” APSCUF President Kenneth Mash said last week. “We will, if the system gives us no other option, stand up for our students, our universities and ourselves.”

“We can only hope that APSCUF recognizes the potentially devastating impact that a strike would have on our students,” said Kenn Marshall, PASSHE’s media relations manager, “and shares our commitment to continuing to bargain toward a new agreement in order to ensure there will be no interruption in the fall semester.”

Both groups try to express their concern for the students more than the other, like two divorcing parents trying to win over the favor of their children. Which parent is at fault is irrelevant when the children realize they are the victims of something bigger than they are.

In this case, it is quite obvious the students know they are the victims. The students may have their own perspective of who did right and who did wrong, who started the problem and who should end it, but they all know they are suffering the consequences of someone else’s battles, just like last year.

Students at Shippensburg University are here for their education, and to have some fun on the side. Somewhere along the line, the fight over money started to affect them too much. They see their tuition rising, they see the stress of faculty members working with fewer peers than the year before, they see the administration scratching their heads as they wonder from where to cut more money.

And now, SU students, and thousands more in state schools across Pennsylvania may have showed up for a semester without classes. Only time will tell what will happen.

If a strike does occur, students may take sides to try to end it. That will be up to each student to decide. But just remember to follow the money trail. Budget cuts, vacant staff positions, salary and healthcare changes, tuition hikes and much more all arose from an underfunded, and uncared for state system. With Election Day just a couple months away, it is important to remember who decides how much money the state system receives — the same people that caused the budget impasse.

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