I walked out yesterday in protest of the privitization of Public Education

This is a short blurb/clip we got on the local channel. (see link below)

http://www.wicz.com/news/video.asp?video=10-05-11protest.flv&zone=News

yesterday’s walk-out/protest was great. lots of students showed up to take a stand against budget cuts that will and already have affected students and university workers: higher fees, less money for books, less services, less hours….

example: the secretary for the graduate program I am a part of has 3 different appointments; she works a total of 30 hours. She works for each  program/department 10 hours a week. first this is not enough time to do all the work, she often works from home, and it is not enough time for the program/department to achieve all of its duties since it doesn’t have the staff to support it. Of course, she does an amazing job under these circusmtances but its exploitation.

Furthermore, this situation is justified by the administration with the discoiurse of budget cuts and of course, the corporate model whose logic goes something like this: your program is small and serves only graduate students, as a result you don’t make us any money (undergrads=$$$) and so you do not get funding because we can’t make a profit from you. bottom line you don’t make us $$ so we don’t care.

Thanks for your support, state university administration!

But  back to yesterday—>Most important. as one of the organizers, Maggie, repeated at yesterday’s rally: “this is not just today, this is the beginning of the student movement” because we, students need to take a stand against the corporate model being instituted in the university. This begins by truly understanding that this campus belongs to the students.  We(or our parents) pay tuition and taxes and with this money all of the salaries of the employees of the university and the state government, so we have a right to demand transparency and change as we see fit. This is our university and no one but the students should have a say in how it is run. Educate yourself and make education work for you, not the other way around.

from my other blog: http://bingograduateschool.tumblr.com/