Schools across the country rallied today to protest the rising costs of tuition and the drop in adequate education due to teacher layoffs and furloughs, as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education.
At the University of Washington, the Student Worker Coalition—a group of students, faculty, and staff—organized their own rally. Hundreds of pissed off folks gathered on one of the campus lawns to vocalize their frustration with the school’s administration. Many familiar talking points from the speakers: no layoffs, freeze tuition increases, cut administrators’ pay. After the speeches, the riled masses formed a picket line encapsulating the campus’ quad.
Michelle Woo, one of the event organizers, said after the event, “We believe in a democratic process… all of our actions are focused on empowering the students to take control over our lives and our education.” At this time, however, the group doesn’t have any concrete plans to see their demands fulfilled. “I don’t know how we’re going to get there,” said Woo. “Right now, we’re creating a mass movement.”
Somehow in my five years of college I skipped the part where I pretended that student movements were worth a shit.
Democratic process?
What’s democratic about a bunch of middle class kids arguing that shopowners and Target clerks should pay taxes so they can get an education for 1/3 of market value??
@2: If the changes that come are meaningful, then it opens up the possibility that the children of those shopowners and Target clerks could get schooling without bankrupting their families, whenever the time comes around.
they then marched over to the UW Tower along the Ave and protested for a good half hour.
I award the Anarchist pretender the Fnarf poseur award for best fake anarchist.
Most irritating thing to deal with on the Ave today, and that’s saying something. I’m glad a bunch of fucking don’t-have-to-work-so-we-can-protest kids got their rocks off without a plan or goal or even concrete understanding of why tuition goes up.
As a full-time UW student who couldn’t attend the rally because I was at my job (where i work 30hrs/week so I can feed myself and afford tuition), you all can suck it. Not everyone is middle-class, draining mommy & daddy’s piggy banks and bitching just because they can.
#6
Right, and when you get your education, you’ll be 80K in debt and have a job that you could have taught yourself to do.
Education is just another sub-prime loan.
Be sure to read their brilliant manifesto here: http://nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com/
Your tax dollars hard at work.
Dunno why staff members would join in this. The Coalition is calling for lower tuition and smaller class sizes, which means they’re quietly painting a big fat bull’s-eye on every staff member’s back. (The budget’s a zero-sum game…actually a negative-sum game, since the state keeps cutting its contribution. Unlike most faculty members, staff can be furloughed or fired.)
The first thing that students need to learn is that money doesn’t grow on trees. If they want lower tuition and/or smaller class sizes, that means higher taxes (or philanthropic contributions). With the state awash in red ink right now, that just isn’t gonna happen. Period.
My instructors at a local community college are mostly part time so they don’t really have time to prepare lesson plans, grade papers, not answer their phones in class…
It’s kind of hilarious because it is so very expensive and our options are limited. I know, I know. It’s an investment and we’re all supposedly going to get crazy jobs on the fast track! Spoiled rich kids!
Except all the thirty year old single parents and laid off construction workers.
I totally support Obama’s push to require all schools to be accredited and to place stricter guidelines for accreditation.
Also if any teacher is reading this and slacking off because you’re just not paid enough, I’m sorry. But please don’t pass the crap you’re getting to your students.
There are lots of jobs that the rest of us work that don’t pay a basic living wage and we still try not to give people food borne illnesses and what not.
It’s a cycle of abuse.
Too bad The Stranger couldn’t do a more in-depth piece about this issue, because it’s a big deal. The student strike today at the UW was one of dozens of rallies across the country, where thousands of students came out to express that the opportunity to achieve a university education should be valued as a civil right and a public good. Tuition costs have been rising much faster than inflation, since well before the economic “crisis,” as a result of a process of privatization which has turned higher education into a profit-driven industry. Universities use students’ money as collateral for capital intensive, often risky financial investments and expensive new and renovated facilities, while education quality and working conditions on campus suffer. Raising tuition makes higher education less accessible for low income students, students of color, and many others. The defense of public education is a new civil rights movement.
Oooooh, students protesting! THat will have zero impact.
” as a result of a process of privatization “
Any actual examples?
Come on kids, we gotta pay for all these new jails to hold pot users somehow…
I joined student protests of tuition hikes at state schools in Massachusetts at the end of the 1980s, and the most we accomplished was some bad press for trampling the flowers at the State House in Boston (you could see my future wife and I in the picture in the Boston Globe of a mob of angry students making poor Governor Dukakis’ life slightly more miserable). That week of student strikes, picket lines and marches taught me some important life lessons about political futility, so it wasn’t a total loss…*
*ironically, my bachelor’s degree turned out to be a total loss, as my “career” turned out not to require a degree at all
A few examples of privatization:
– Undergrad tuition for the first time in history is a larger part of the UW budget that state funding.
– UW administrators lobby for bills that would take tuition-setting authority away from the state legislature and allow President Emmert and the UW Board of Regents to set tuition.
– Board of Regents and high-level university administrators sit on corporate boards with clear conflicts of interest in relation to UW contracts, for example, Provost Phyllis Wise and Nike, which has a 35 million dollar contract with the UW and very significant challenges to its human rights record.
– Research is increasingly corporate-funded, with products of that research taking the form of patented knowledge–I honestly wish I had more specific info on this point so I will do more investigation here, but I know this is an issue in medical research in regards to the pharmaceutical industry, and in technology research as well. My own social science research has been heavily influenced by being funded by corporate social responsibility money from Microsoft, who flat out told our research team that they only wanted to hear results that would validate programs they are already funding.
UW administrators say they are opposed to this privatization, but their actions on campus and in Olympia don’t always bear this out: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/405696_uw…
I can’t believe the idiocy expressed in the majority of the comments here. Not only that, it saddens me to see such utter cynicism. But of course, cynicism and ignorance go hand in hand I suppose and are both a product of the education policy in this country for the last thirty years. Not only Universities but public education in general has been under attack for some time now. Legislation regarding Universities has allowed for increasing corporate funding of research grants which, by the way, means that your precious tax dollars are going to bank roll corporate research not spoiled rich kids. Tuition hikes and pay cutbacks for educators have been the dominant policy in U.S. education. The problem is systemic, and sadly the very academic programs which teach us to recognize systemic problems are some of the main programs put under the chopping block.
These protest, part of a movement that began with the UC system, are certainly about MUCH more than “spoiled rich kids asking for handouts,” but why even explain this to most of you? It’s late, I’m exhausted and you’ve obviously chosen your side. So fuck you.
I think the cynicism mostly surrounds the idea that protesting will cause anything to happen. Student protests are mostly a way for people to feel like they’re doing something; they don’t actually accomplish anything. I mean, if they worked, Tibet would be free by now, right? 😉
@19 So just fuck everything right. Nothing can resist late capitalism so let’s just all roll over and play dead and any time a group of people actually tries something let’s make sure to remind them that what they’re doing is futile and let’s make sure to do it in the most snarky possible way to hide our own resentment behind a hip facade and perhaps justify our own inaction. YAWN. I’m just sick of that brand of determinist thought. If you got a better idea than protest, an idea that can effect significant change, then I’m waiting, but otherwise you have nothing but nihilism which is nothing but conformity with a bitter grin. If some students protest to “feel like they’re doing something” most of their detractors are poo pooing protest as a way to justify doing nothing. The thing is even if you protest to “feel like you’re doing something” you might actually DO SOMETHING.
@20: To be blunt, students would be a lot more influential politically if they put half the effort into voting that they put into protesting. Turnout figures for that age group are usually pretty poor.
Vote. Write letters. It may not seem as cool and counterculture as protesting but it’s a lot more effective.
Orv. First off, who says the two are mutually exclusive? Vote and march. Secondly, if Obama is any indication as to what it means to have “progressive” politics in the white house, then voting and writing letters can only do so much for leftist politics and by “so much” I mean not a whole lot. From my perspective (and I do vote), voting is more ineffectual than marching. We live in a country were proper leftist thinkers like Kucinich, Gravel and Nader are completely de-legitimized by our so called democratic system, and even a classic neoliberal like Obama is deemed a “socialist.” Writing letters and voting is not going to effect significant change in a state and fed. government largely bound to a conservative hegemony. This is Reagan’s world. We’ve been living in it for years and no candidate for public office who has the financial and media backing to be viable has any investment in changing this world. Either you benefit from this system and would like to keep it chugging along, or you want something new which means something properly NEW. This kids HAVE an argument. Just compare the amount of money this country spends on A) education B) defense C) major bank bailouts and D) the war on drugs. Then come and talk to me about students draining tax dollars from the middle class. I mean Christ.
@20 and 22: Vote and lobby legislators. Personally I think protests are counter-productive. Regardless of how worthy the goal, most people are going to see this as a bunch of entitled kids whining for more. Whine quietly and persistently to the right people and you’ll get what you want. Works for the AARP.
@23 is correct. It’s hard, sometimes tedious work, but it’s effective. Yeah, you get incremental change, but it’s better than nothing. Or you can pick up the bong and dream about overturning the system. Your choice.
@17 Regarding corporate funding for research, it is not increasing as a share of total funding. In 1999 universities got 7.5% of their research funding from industry sources, in 2004 it was down to 5% (lowest ever). Campus research is rarely a good investment for companies, since a direct hire is infinitely easier to control than a professor, and NIH, NSF, DOE, and DARPA are there to foot the bill on campus. The pressure to patent research comes from universities, the government (Bayh-Dole), and professors who want to get rich.
Hey college kids, like shitty education at high prices? Thank your parents! The baby-boomer motto “I’m spending my kids inheritance” isn’t so funny now, is it?
I’d pay more taxes if I had a job.
What should I give up so that kids can go to college at a discount?
@2: I’m sure some middle class students participated on Thursday, but it is inaccurate to paint student protesters as a bunch of spoiled middle class kids who want more. In my experience as a TA and activist, usually (not always of course!) that type of student is the most apathetic because they did not have to fight to come to college and aren’t facing years of debt after. On Thursday, hundreds of students of color and students from working class backgrounds participated on Thursday because we are pissed off that our education is being privatized.