Government of the Student Body officials and several ISU students will travel to the state capitol today to protest an impending $12.2 million cut to the state’s current higher-education budgets.A Republican proposal introduced to the Legislature last week would strip $8 million from the current budgets of the three regent schools and almost $1.7 million from Iowa’s 15 community colleges. The cut also would decrease the state funding allocated to the Department of Education and tuition grants for independent colleges. K-12 money would not be affected.GSB will take about 20 students in two vans to Capitol Hill in Des Moines. The vans will be leaving at 11 a.m. and noon, said GSB President Ben Golding.The budget-cut proposal is in response to an overestimation of state revenue for this year, he said, and the decrease in state funding will translate into major problems for current and prospective regent-school students.”We have an opportunity … to speak to the Senate and discuss how the tuition will affect the students next fall,” he said.If the budget cuts are approved, Iowa State would lose $3.3 million, the University of Iowa would lose $4 million and the University of Northern Iowa would lose $1 million from their current budgets.”We are going to stress the concepts of affordability, accessibility and the quality of the state universities,” Golding said. “We want to communicate to the Legislature why Iowa high school students choose to go to Iowa universities.”Sen. Johnie Hammond, D-Ames, said she hopes regent-school students will speak out against the budget cuts.”We have groups coming in to talk about the impact of this on their particular group,” she said. “I would hope students and faculty would come down and speak about what would happen to public education in the state.”Hammond said the cuts, which would affect the remaining few months of the academic year, would be taken out of the current ISU budget. Students would lose out on services and programs they have already paid for through tuition.”We have students who paid tuition for classes, and we have faculty who teach those classes,” she said. “Many of them have only one section. We can’t call that to a screeching halt the first of March. What do we do? Do we refund tuition? Then we haven’t affected savings at all.”Sen. Donald Redfern, R-Cedar Rapids, said the cuts, if approved, would not hurt the day-to-day operations of the universities.”We feel, at this date, we just want to do the best we can,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any cutbacks in present operations, but we will all have to tighten our belts.”Andy Tofilon, GSB director of inter-governmental affairs, said it is important for the state legislators to consider student needs and concerns.”We want to make sure that the Legislature knows where we stand on this issue,” he said. “Our goal is to make them change their decisions about cutting funding to Iowa State and the other regent universities.”Golding said it is important for GSB and the student body to show the Senate how seriously budget cuts would hurt public universities.”This isn’t something that will take effect two years from now, this is this year’s budget,” he said. “This is going to affect the next four months. No matter what year you are in school, from seniors to freshmen, everybody is going to feel it.”