One of Mahatma Ghandi’s most famous quotes, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” doesn’t seem to apply to Cal State Long Beach students, unless they are seeking no change.
Our education continues to face extremely difficult challenges and most of our community remains silent. Enrollment cuts are faced with silence. Overcrowded classrooms are something our students don’t seem to mind. Fewer course offerings each semester barely draw a whimper. What have become annual student fee increases seem OK to most.
The activism at our institution is pathetically nonexistent.
A Daily 49er article Monday reported that CSULB administrators are already drawing out potential battle strategies for the next round of budget cuts. The problem here is that the war will be waged within our university, instead of on the field where it should be fought — in the Sacramento Legislature, in the governor’s office and at the California State University Chancellor’s Office.
The second or third of the three scenarios posed during the Oct. 15 budget meeting are most likely to happen. In the second one, buried beneath a 3.25 percent state budget reduction, is the possibility of another 10 percent student fee increase.
The third scenario is like the second, only with a budget cut of 6.5 percent. The student fee increases are still there.
We can discount the first scenario because it makes an assumption that no student fee increases will happen. This is laughable to the point of making poor students want to cry. But students don’t seem to be offended.
As sure as you can read this newspaper, the board of trustees is going to gouge us this November. We know this because we’ve watched the pattern of abuse during the past few years. Once the University of California board of regents foists tuition increases onto the backs of its students, the CSU follows suit.
The UC system has practically guaranteed to raise student fees by more than 30 percent by next year, so the 10 percent hike to CSU students is an optimistic estimate. It will likely be higher.
And yet, you sit as silent as a sleeping giant, CSULB. This giant needs to awaken from its slumber.
One of the problems we face is a severe shortage of leadership in voicing our dissent. When the board of trustees passed the last round of fee increases, we had no student trustee to scream for us. Our student government leaders at the state level seem to have folded like a cheap beach chair and succumbed that our fate is inevitable. Where is the political activism so direly needed?
Cal State Dominguez Hills — and other campuses — are already facing draconian program eliminations. We appear to pretend we are insulated from the danger, but we are not.
Whichever one of the 3.25 percent or 6.5 percent “state budget reductions” scenarios plays out, it will translate into programs disappearing on our campus. The cuts will be combined with student fee increases, just like this year and the one before.
Letter writing campaigns and mock funerals are nice as feel-good efforts, but are mostly ignored in Sacramento. Massive e-mails would be a great idea if legislators and the governor didn’t have staffs to hit the mass “delete” button.
One effective way to communicate our distaste would be to hit politicians where they live and most of them live in the social networking world. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Poke and tweet him. Write on his wall and fill his twitter page. Do the same with every state lawmaker you can find. Be their friend.
Another annoyance would be to blast their office telephones. Tie up their lines with your contempt for how they are refusing to listen.
What we need is a good old-fashioned revolt. UC Berkeley students had the right idea a few weeks ago when more than 5,000 students walked out of classes and protested.
That’s the type of activism it’s going to take up and down the state to get our message across. We need to take to the streets. But again, it falls to the gaping hole in leadership, either because of fear to take a stand, or complacency to be involved.
Ghandi taught a great message about being the change we seek. Our problem is that we aren’t seeking change; we’re waiting for it to happen. When we wait for change to happen, it’s likely we won’t be happy with the change we inherit. We’ll see higher education get flushed down the toilet and we’ll watch passively.