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The University of California has had to push, scream and pull teeth these past few years to get the state to give a dime to outreach. But with outreach funding down 75 percent from what it was a couple years back, it’s now up to students to help fill the gap.

This spring’s student election will include a referendum on an annual $19.50 fee, of which $13.50 will go to fund the Student Initiated Outreach Committee. The committee’s volunteers do work including tutoring, mentoring, and holding political and cultural workshops for K-12 students in Los Angeles.

The rest of the money will go to the Community Service Commission, which sponsors 22 community service projects, and the Community Retention Committee, whose peer counselors actually have time to talk to students about academics and other issues they might be dealing with.

Let’s be honest: Less than $20 a year is really not a lot to ask.

Student Heightening Academic Performance through Education is one program the outreach committee supports. The program’s director, Jullien Gordon, talked about a high school student from Inglewood named Edwin, whose mentor Oscar is graduating this year from UCLA.

When Edwin and Oscar began working together one-on-one two years ago, “Edwin’s grades weren’t going to get him into a UC,” Gordon said. Edwin got word recently that he has options: He was accepted to UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. He is appealing his application to UCLA, hoping to come here in the fall.

Your $20 could buy three lunches and clogged arteries at Panda Express. Or it could help give a future to students who are willing to work hard for it. It could contribute to taking care of transportation and other costs for students who brave Los Angeles’ bottlenecks to volunteer with programs serving the homeless, K-12 pupils and disabled people.

Students need to step in and pay where the state won’t. It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality – California’s stingy, and with the budget in the gutter, these UCLA groups need the money now.

In a lot of ways, the means aren’t ideal but the ends are. The state of affairs is pathetic; student fees are at an all-time high, and we don’t even know what we’re paying for much of the time.

That should be called tuition. But this proposed fee – Promoting Understanding and Learning through Service and Education – is what a fee should be; it goes directly to specific causes.

Still, the trend of asking students to empty their pockets needs to stop.

There are questions of efficiency in spending that need to be addressed. The Community Retention Committee spends thousands of dollars each year to provide free printing, already available for many students elsewhere on campus. Groups doing community service should try harder at carpooling and other alternatives before asking for new vans.

Students should vote for PULSE. But in exchange, the referendum’s beneficiaries need to keep accountable by thinking about where they could streamline programs, saving money that could go toward an even greater number of worthy causes.