Why We're Angry

“Where did the money go?” one sign inquired at the “March forth on March 4th” student rally at San Jose State. That question has certainly crossed my mind in my two years at SJSU. It is a legitimate question—money shouldn’t just disappear. But in the black hole of government, it does. Due to the urgency of the condition of California’s education system, the question should not be “where did the money go?” but “where is it going?” The mission of affordable government-funded education for students striving for baccalaureate graduation is in peril. Action must be swift and precise to save CSU and UC (though neither “swift” nor “precise” are terms the government is familiar with.) Students and faculty alike are angry at the system. The two main concerns are the imbalance in educational supply and demand due to funding cuts, and the inability to get into needed classes.

One speaker at the SJSU rally noted that, “you’ve got to spend money to make money.” Herein lies the first issue with the system: there is no money in the government to make money with. Slurping the mud from the bottom of a dry reservoir is not particularly satisfying. But people find it easier to order funding from the government without expecting consequences rather than emptying their own pockets. On the surface it seems to be simple and painless. But government funding is tainted—the effects ripple through the system until they reappear in the form of higher taxes. Regardless, Governor Schwarzenegger recently approved of a 305 million dollar increase in the CSU budget for next year (Briscoe). It is doubtful, though, that this will counter the 1 billion in cuts from the last two years that are affecting the students now—mathematically speaking it won’t. And this has only added to the frustration of students who want money from the government and continually try to squeeze the blood out of a turnip. However, that 305 million may pave the way for future increases in government funding, and many students are hopeful that this will be the case.

The second issue is the students’ inability to graduate on time due to class cuts. The number of classes and professors cut from the system must be directly and rigidly proportional to the number of students excluded. The result of a discrepancy in that proportion is a situation where students in the system cannot enter the classes they need to graduate on time. This creates a bottleneck as in the current quagmire. Approximately 40,100 CSU students were barred from the system this year due to the tightening of entrance criteria in 2009, nearly an 11 percent annual drop. However, 2610 CSU faculty members were also lost, which is almost 17 percent (Grey). Those numbers do not coincide, and the student body has suffered tremendously because of this. With the interest of our future in mind, it is preferable that all students have access to higher education. Since this is no longer realistically possible without massive increases in state or student cost, student body cuts are inevitable—but should be done with surgical precision to prevent even more problems.

There is a slough of possible actions that would help ease the situation if they weren’t behind a political brick wall. For example, cutting the pay of the management staff in proportion to the active faculty’s pay cuts. As of 2004, the president of each campus made 200-350k annually not including a 9k auto stipend, housing bonuses, etc (James). Those numbers have steadily increased in the last four years. Ten to twenty percent of the entire budget of each CSU (consequently the entire system) goes towards paying the salaries of the lucky few (James). But they were caught by the safety net long ago, while the students and professors still fall towards firings, class unavailability, and more anger and frustration. Without a proper overhaul, the California higher education system will suffer more heavily from the symptoms already present. Those include: graduation bottlenecking and subsequent bottlenecking in transfers from community colleges and high schools, more budget balancing fiascos, and the “rob[bery] of the entire world of an educated populus.” It is an unfortunate consequence of a macroeconomic downturn and an imbalance in the supply of and demand for education. An overhaul of the entire system is necessary, but throwing more money at it seems to be the only temporary fix. “This is bullshit,” read one sign at the SJSU rally. Welcome to California.

Barnes, James. "Six-Figure Salaries Common in CSU." The Spartan Daily. N.p., 20 Apr 2004. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Briscoe, Erin. "Local Students Rally To Save Higher Education."Southwest Bakersfield News. N.p., 5 Mar 2010. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Grey, Marge. "The Impact of the California State University" The California State University: Working For California. N.p., 26 Nov, 2008. Web. 16 Mar 2010. (Link).

Current Mood: Productive

Listening To: "If You're Going To San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie

God Bless La-Z-Boys

“We’ve become a country that sits down…and listens to people shouting about freedom, but now people equate freedom not with the acquisition of knowledge but with comfort,” congressman Wayne Gilchrest said. “The whole concept of freedom has become the idea of comfort, with a complete lack of responsibility. In today’s America of leather seated cars and political blogs, sometimes it seems like he is right. Americans have sacrificed true freedom for manufactured freedom and comfortable ignorance. Two factors among others have accelerated and solidified this sacrifice: Americans’ attachment to physical comfort and the tube feeding of politics by the media.

The liberation provided by the consumerism imminent in American life is an illusion. Not in the sense that it does not exist—the products that we as Americans have invented and manufactured have “liberated” us in the sense that our horizons have expanded. We can get on an airplane and fly to a remote island. But once we arrive, we find ourselves still immersed in the comforts of consumerism, and on lands controlled by the limiting influence of the same government. And everything from industrially grown beef to mass-produced cars flows through the umbilical cord of comfort that is never severed during our modern lives. People can venture into the wilderness in futile attempt to shun the influence of consumerism, but it always remains attached. A backcountry skier might imagine himself removed from society—he is after all on top of a secluded mountain where few dare to roam. But consumer products are literally bound to his feet and protect him from the elements of nature. Consumer thoughts run through his head—maybe he wants to get wider boards to surf the powder with, or a flashier jacket, or warmer gloves. Consumer blood runs through his veins. In the rare case that that lifeline to consumerism is cut, the results are not pleasant. In 1992 a young man by the name of Chris McCandless left the comfort and the “freedom” offered in his suburban home and ventured into the Alaskan wilderness for “true freedom.” Within several weeks he had died from starvation, because of the lack of the comfortable lifestyle he was bound to. He was reckless, but the cause of his death was not entirely his fault. The complete responsibility he had for his own life was simply too abrupt a change from the society he was raised in. The idea that consumerism contributes to our freedom—that is the illusion. It minimizes our responsibility for ourselves, and our freedom is minimized with it.

A second factor that contributes to America’s detachment from responsibility is the influence of the media. Widespread access to the opinions of the news media has changed politics from a serious matter into a hobby. Americans love drama, to “stand up for their causes” and openly debate their “freedoms” and “rights,” and where “the real America” is. At times in American history, people have had to work for their freedom, and in some cases—the Revolution and Second World War for example—they have had to fight for it. While traces of struggle still exist in a country that continues to strive for perfection, they tend to be over hyped and under funded, thanks in no small part to the extremist political griping from Fox and MSNBC. The soapbox speeches, sign waving, little ribbons and slogans feel empowering, but at the end of the day, it is no more than a game. It is entertainment—entertainment for more American comfort. And with the click of a button, Americans can detach from the action, rest from the battle, and enjoy all of the comfort with none of the responsibility. They do not crawl through dust in a foreign land; gun in hand, fearing for their lives. They sit in a La-Z-Boy and take pleasure in a little afternoon taste of a little media Kool-Aid.

It seems cynical to think about America as a “fake” country, a country made of plastic and processed cheese. After all, we Americans love to think of ourselves as hardworking, as responsible citizens of the world who are free because of our own sweat and blood. But this is the modern world of the “flat-screen TV, the gas-guzzling car, the goods made in China,” like congressman Gilchrest said. And we often forget that it is the often sweat and blood of others that buoys our lifestyle, while we float freely and lazily on a pool raft made of cheap foreign rubber.

Current Mood: Productive

Listening To: "Corporate America" by Boston