Fresno State's Associated Students president and like-minded supporters announced Wednesday that they will try to marshal up to 23,000 student votes and pressure state government not to raise university fees or cut course offerings further.

Students at California State University, Fresno, will represent one arm of a systemwide effort, which includes 23 campuses. The main challenge for their plan, they conceded, is that too many students don't vote or care about politics, even when the cost and quality of their educations is at stake.

Neil Gibson, student government president, and students DeAnna Stay and Ana Melendez warned that Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget would increase the ratio of students to faculty by 5%. It also would eliminate some efforts to recruit and support students with low incomes and others who are underrepresented on university campuses.

They said that Schwarzenegger's budget proposal would cut enrollment of new freshmen by 10%, and the maximum income allowed for qualifying recipients of Cal Grant awards would fall by 10%, cutting the number eligible.

"We are paying more and receiving less in education," Gibson said. Trips to lobby state legislators in Sacramento will continue, Gibson said, and a letter-writing campaign will seek to pressure state government officials to represent students' interests.

University students tend to put other issues ahead of politics and voting, he said, "until they think the sky is falling. Well, the sky is falling. And I think they see it."

Stefanie Araki, 19, an animal science major, said she sees it. She voted in the state gubernatorial recall election because she wasn't satisfied with how former Gov. Gray Davis was conducting the Governor's Office and "taking from school."

The change to Schwarzenegger has not helped, she said, but she will continue voting. "If you aren't satisfied, you vote them out."

Other students think they are too busy to vote, Araki said. They devote their attention to studies and tests and increasingly to jobs, which help finance their university educations.

Miguel Garibay, 22, and Maricela Gutierrez, 21, said that they neither vote nor intend to registe.

"I think it doesn't count," said Garibay, a marketing major. "It doesn't make a difference."

He works as a machine operator 25 to 30 hours per week to help finance his studies. Among students, Garibay said, "the norm is not to vote."

Gutierrez, who is pursuing a liberal studies major and works 20 hours per week as a first-grade teaching assistant, said: "I just don't think our vote counts."