As readers of the XChange are aware, I’ve been a little behind posting news coverage from this past week’s rallies. It’s been quite a week and I don’t see things slowing down in the foreseeable future. Here’s some selected coverage of this week’s rallies.
Monday, March 28th “United We Stand, Underfunded We Fail” rally in Harrisburg
On March 28, 2011 1,000 plus converged on our state capitol in Harrisburg carrying the message, “United We Stand, Underfunded We Fail.” Here are three more videos from that rally. For more videos from the rally and from rallies across the entire State System of Higher Education, check out APSCUF’s YouTube channel:
APSCUF President, Steve Hicks
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APSCUF Vice President, Ken Mash
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Lock Haven Track Member Nick Hilton after 100 Mile Run
There was a lot of media at Tuesday’s rally to Defend Kutztown University and resist Gov. Corbett’s cuts to education. Here is some video of the rally. There were some other speakers, including APSCUF-KU President Paul Quinn, KU Provost Carlos Vargas-Aburto, and Rick Smith of the Rick Smith Show, but I don’t have those videos yet. When I do, I’ll post them as well.
Part 1: Mike Gambone, Nick Imbesi, and Kevin Mahoney
As readers of the XChange know, I’ve been on the Rick Smith Show a couple of times now. Rick’s show is pretty much the strongest voice out there right now covering the resistance to draconian budget cuts in PA and around the nation. Rick was the ONLY radio show, for example, to broadcast from inside the Madison, WI capitol rotunda during the protests. Rick was out in force again in Harrisburg this past Monday for the “United We Stand, Underfunded We Fail” rally and was at Kutztown Tuesday for our local rally.
He recently put up a page called “PA Budget 2011” on which you can find archived shows dedicated to the PA Budget Battle. Check it out.
Both APSCUF-KU President Paul Quinn and I were on the Rick Smith Show this week. You can check out our interviews here:
If there’s one thing the education and public services budget cuts over these last few years as taught me, it’s that it doesn’t pay to be modest; in fact it will cost you in the end. Libraries have been dealing with extreme budget cuts for some time now, and they’ve admitted one of the major reasons they’re facing cuts is because they haven’t been vocal about the services they provide. It’s their fault that people don’t see them as valuable, and they’re absolutely right. If people don’t know what you do, then they often assume you do nothing. The PA public schools are now falling into the same trap.
Of course no one thought that education would have to prove its worth, but after watching some of these senate hearings, particularly the hearing with Chancellor Cavanaugh and the presidents of Millersville and Shippensburg, it’s become abundantly clear to me that the people in government have no idea what’s going on at these schools and the cuts they’ve already made, nor do they really understand how tuition dollars work. Some of the state senators were even asking how the presidents and the chancellor explained the fact that many people were saying that the state funding was going to building new facilities, particularly football stadiums, rather than to academics. And I didn’t even know about many of PASSHE’s cost saving measures until the hearing.
I know that when KU initially began major cuts, particularly when the university was slashing programs, I didn’t fully understand how we could have money for beautification and building projects but we didn’t have enough money to keep the nursing program. I had to actively seek out information about why that was the case, and I worked on campus and was in a degree program. The administration didn’t seem to care that the vast majority of its primary audience didn’t understand where the funding was coming from. After learning where it came from, I assumed that the people who gave us the money at least knew where it was coming from and where it was going, but after the hearing I realized that the state government doesn’t know that. And the Governor clearly doesn’t understand that cutting state funds by 50% will not force people to stop raising tuition. There are so many factors that go into tuition and fees, and PASSHE has managed to raise tuition by a mere 50% over the years while some of the state related institutions have raised it by 100% or more. I have to think somewhere in the middle would’ve been the best rate to find to raise tuition so you can sustain yourself while still being affordable. But those state-related institutions are also major research institutions so you can’t just assume that their tuition could’ve stayed much lower over the years. Things are more expensive all around, and campus operating expenses and facilities for students are no exception. So it’s not simply a decrease in funds will mean that universities are forced to be more fiscally responsible to lower tuition. If anything the tuition will have to be raised even as the universities tighten their belts.
So, much like libraries, education must be more vocal. It can’t just assume that because it provides a valuable service, that because it’s an investment, everyone will understand that. Nor can it assume that everyone knows why some universities can afford new buildings but not programs or how the tuition dollars work. Education cannot be silent anymore. And thankfully Monday’s rally in Harrisburg was a wonderful step in that vocal direction.
Here’s an opportunity to write and publish on the relationships between quality education and the underfunded, casualized labor system in higher education.
The journal Open Words: Access & English Studieshas put out a Call for Papers for a special issue on contingent labor and educational access. (Full disclosure: I am one of the three guest editors of this issue.) This call is especially timely given the recent attacks on higher education funding. As tuition increases, our students’ access decreases. As budgets are slashed, full-time teachers become an endangered species. Open Words is especially interested in connections with Composition, Rhetoric, Writing, Literature or Literacy studies.
We work and live at a time when the American cultural and economic politics are pushing against labor equity and quality education; when colleges and universities operate according to corporate logics that consistently work to dehumanize faculty and students. While these forces come to bear on contingent faculty, open-admissions campuses, and non-mainstream students in unique ways, we also believe that careful analysis of such conditions presents significant possibilities for positive changes across levels and types of institutions. At the risk of sounding cliché, even managerial, difficult situations really do sometimes present unique opportunities.
With that frame in mind, we invite contributions for our Spring 2012 issue addressing relations of contingent labor, open access, and non-mainstream students; manuscripts (generally 15-25 pp., although we will review longer submissions) might consider these questions, or use them as provocations to ask and answer others:
How does the increasing reliance on adjunct faculty on open-admissions campuses (and/or campuses serving largely non-mainstream student populations) impact students’ learning conditions? Faculty’s working conditions? Academic freedom? Curricular control? And how are these situations complicated at institutions employing graduate teaching assistants?
Why is the casualization of academic labor happening more quickly, or to greater degree, on open-admissions campuses and campuses serving non-mainstream students? What strategies do faculty, both contingent and permanent, and students have at our disposal to respond to the inequitable conditions facing us?
How do the interests of open-admission, community, vocational/technical, and branch university campus faculty coincide/overlap with the interests of students and administrators? How do these interests differ?
How is the trend toward hiring non-tenure track faculty affecting the teaching of writing? As PhDs in literature, for example, are pushed out of tenure lines into these non-tenure lines, how do their (probable) lack of familiarity with composition scholarship and theory, and differing professional commitments to teaching writing, impact students, programs, and other faculty on our campuses? And, how is this trend affecting literature programs and the degrees to which they can address the interests and concerns of their ‘non-mainstream’ students?
To what extent are contingent faculty involved in curricular and/or professional development, and to what extent can/should they be? How might departments/units balance the desire to involve contingent faculty in curriculum development, or placement (for example), with the minimal (if any) compensation most units offer for the work? How does this problem become more complex on campuses serving large populations of non-mainstream students with large numbers of contingent faculty?
Please join us today on the Schaeffer Auditorium Lawn any time between 11am through 1pm. KU faculty, staff and students, as well as concerned Kutztown residents, will hold a rally to protest the $26 million dollar cut the university will suffer if the Governor Corbett’s budget-attack passes. Tuition could increase by as much as 33%!
We’ll be joined Judy Schwank, newly elected PA state senator, Kutztown Mayor Sandra Green, and KU provost Dr. Vargas.
I’ll have a report form the rally later in the day!
You can’t understate the critical importance of doing your research. Now, if you cut funds to education and students don’t learn how to do critical research, then they’ll never be able to do what The Young Turks do here:
Rick Smith joined on the steps of the capitol and reminded everyone: “if you’re not seated at the table, you’re on the menu.” Whose house? Our house!!!!
Pics of today’s really by Brett Banditelli from the Rick Smith Show:
Despite the protests in Albany, Cuomo moves to cut education and make schools compete for state funds.
Budget Deal in New York Includes Cuts
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders on Sunday announced a budget deal that appears likely to include significant cuts to the City University of New York and State University of New York systems. Some additional funds were added that will lessen cuts to the the community colleges in both systems and to SUNY hospitals. More details are expected in coming days.
If you haven’t been following this story, you should. If it was not enough for Wisconsin Gov. Walker to underhandedly strip collective bargaining rights from public employee unions, his operatives are now going after faculty members — one noted historian at UW-Madison in particular, William Cronon — who have sought to critique the Governor’s actions. Here’s how today’s Inside Higher Ed introduces the story:
Wisconsin Gets Weirder
March 28, 2011
Just when it seemed that the political conflict and intrigue over public higher education in Wisconsin could not get any more intense or convoluted, it did. Thrust into the tangled mix of controversy over employee union policies and potential governance restructuring that roiled the University of Wisconsin System this winter came word late Thursday of a Republican operative’s perceived attack on academic freedom and on one of the university’s most visible scholars, which promises to complicate an already combustible situation.
The article points to the Wisconsin GOP’s response to Cronon’s recent NY Times Op-Ed as one of the ways that the GOP is now attacking academic freedom. In the Op-Ed, Cronon argued that the way in which the Wisconsin GOP are steamrolling over collective bargaining and Wisconsin law breaks with Wisconsin traditions in ways that recall that notorious Wisconsin Senator from the 1950s, Joe McCarthy. Cronon wrote:
But Mr. Walker’s assault on collective bargaining rights breaks with Wisconsin history in two much deeper ways as well. Among the state’s proudest traditions is a passion for transparent government that often strikes outsiders as extreme. Its open meetings law, open records law and public comment procedures are among the strongest in the nation. Indeed, the basis for the restraining order blocking the collective bargaining law is that Republicans may have violated open meetings rules in passing it. The legislation they have enacted turns out to be radical not just in its content, but in its blunt ends-justify-the-means disregard for openness and transparency.
This in turn points to what is perhaps Mr. Walker’s greatest break from the political traditions of his state. Wisconsinites have long believed that common problems deserve common solutions, and that when something needs fixing, we should roll up our sleeves and work together — no matter what our politics — to achieve the common good.
Mr. Walker’s conduct has provoked a level of divisiveness and bitter partisan hostility the likes of which have not been seen in this state since at least the Vietnam War. Many citizens are furious at their governor and his party, not only because of profound policy differences, but because these particular Republicans have exercised power in abusively nontransparent ways that represent such a radical break from the state’s tradition of open government.
Cronon’s case is important because is indicates the length to which this new breed of Republican will go to ensure compliance and squash dissent. One more reason these folks are going after tenure. After all, the original purpose of tenure was to ensure that the government or an institution could not silence unpopular arguments. It was a protection against the kind of tyranny we are seeing in Wisconsin.
A few hours from now (yes, it’s 3am), four buses will be leaving Kutztown University for a rally in Harrisburg against Gov. Corbett’s draconian cuts to public education in Pennsylvania, PASSHE in particular. You can follow my live tweeting during the rally at @kuxchange. I would encourage anyone who is attending today’s rally or commenting on the rally to use the hashtag #PaEdCuts.
I wanted to share my third and final email pitch to Kutztown University faculty to GET ON THE BUS or join the caravan to Harrisburg:
Dear colleagues,
I am writing one last time to urge all fence-sitters come to Harrisburg TODAY for a rally against Corbett’s dramatic cuts to PASSHE and public education in PA. To the best of my knowledge, we still have a few seats left (I had thought that we were going to have to lobby our State APSCUF for a third APSCUF bus, but, alas that’s not the case). I would like for all of them to be full. I will forfeit my seats and drive up to four people myself if we run out of room.
The last update I received from SGB was that they will be sending two buses as well. As faculty, we often talk about the importance of having good classroom models for out students. Publicly resisting cuts in education that will dramatically affect our futures and the futures of our students is an opportunity to model what being a critical citizen is all about. We have coordinated with SGB, ACE, and UGC and we will all be leaving for Harrisburg together in a KU caravan! On the bus to Harrisburg, we will be distributing postcards to send to legislators and will have contact info available for all the legislators in PA. We also have 100 signs made, but you are welcomed and encouraged to make your own.
Here are the final details for the rally:
–The Harrisburg Rally starts at 11:30 am and lasts till 1:00 pm. The PASSHE hearing will begin at 1:30 pm. The PASSHE hearing will last until 2:30 pm and then PHEAA will up on the stand. The Rally is scheduled for outside at the Main Capitol Steps, but in case of rain, we have the Rotunda reserved as well.
-PSEA, who has their office directly across from the Main Capitol Steps, at 400 North Third Street, has offered their headquarters as a staging area, so faculty and students can arrive at 11:00 am. Those of you driving down in vehicles can find parking at the River Street garage or surrounding streets.
-Buses from KU will leave at 9:00 am from the parking lot behind Beekey.
-We will be leaving Harrisburg for Kutztown around 4:30pm. Our departure time will be determined, in part, by the length of the hearing. We might, for example, end up leaving a bit earlier. We do not expect to leave Harrisburg any later than 5pm.
-APSCUF will provide boxed lunches at least to those who are on our buses. We are hoping APSCUF will cover lunches for the other student buses as well.
If you have any further questions, please email me at deepdemocracy@gmail.com. I will also be live tweeting from the rally and the hearings (if I get in). You can follow me at @kuxchange on twitter. Ideally, I will also loading photos throughout the day. If the wireless access is good, I’ll post updates to my blog https://kuxchange.wordpress.com throughout the day as well.
If you absolutely cannot make it today, PLEASE MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO BE AT THE “STAND UP for the FUTURE of KUTZTOWN RALLY” tomorrow. Here’s the details:
REMEMBER: half the battle is showing up. It is critical that we have a strong showing in Harrisburg today and on the KU campus tomorrow. Buses will be waiting for you behind Beekey today until 9am. Our students will also be waiting for you tomorrow on the Shaeffer Auditorium lawn. I hope to see all of you.
Excellent editorial by Edinboro professor, John Bavaro:
For Edinboro, other regional state institutions, such as Penn State Behrend, and for other institutions in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, the task of attracting top talent — administrators, professors and students — requires that we offer a competitive product. But how can we do that if we send the message to potential candidates that they are entering a system that’s been decimated by lack of funding, or whose state government cares more about protecting big-business interests than it does protecting quality for its middle class constituencies?
In addition to the brain drain of educators, administrators and research talent we’re facing, the students are now also facing a potential 33 percent tuition hike, which further lessens incentives for them to choose the PSSHE system.
How does a 33 percent rise in tuition per student not constitute a de facto tax hike for the average middle-class, or lower-middle class families, since this income group constitutes the majority of our demographic? And how does this provide any stimulus for the larger state economy?
If the politicians or residents of Pennsylvania think that prescribed draconian cuts directed against all levels of education from preschool to higher education, amounting to a loss of intellectual capital in our community, don’t have a ripple effect on the long-term economy in our region, then they are mistaken. Surgically targeting education in this way, and without proper justification by Corbett, is a cutting off our nose to spite our face. You can’t fight brain drain by administering a lobotomy on the patient.
I’m sure that “big business” will make the argument that the real culprits are regulation and taxation, which choke off the incentive to work and invest in our state. I think most reasonable people would support that business builds jobs, and jobs build wealth and prosperity. It’s naive to think that’s not the case. But with every pun intended at the oil and gas industry, we’re continually held hostage by the threat of the loss of the “trickle down largesse” of the richest companies and the richest citizens.
The conceit that “they earned their money, so they deserve to keep it” doesn’t seem to address that middle and lower class citizens “earned their money” just as hard. This is a battle of rhetoric we’ve all become accustomed to, and a gun that they’ll never remove from our temple.
Their “victimhood” status has the distinct, salty taste of crocodile tears, though, as I don’t see gas drillers leaving Pennsylvania gas or oil in the ground any time soon due to overregulation or taxation, I do see competent university administrators, professors and students deciding to seek employment and educational opportunities elsewhere because of low standards and compensation.
VERY COOL project. I wish I had come across this sooner. On Tuesday, March 22nd, teachers posted their stories under the topic “Why Teachers Like Us Support Unions.” Just some great stuff.
Over the past week or so, there has been renewed attention to the ways in which Pennsylvania students — students in PASSHE and the state-related universities (Temple, Lincoln, Pitt, and Penn State) — have mobilized against Gov. Corbett’s cuts. In my conversations with some of the student organizers at KU and across the state, it is encouraging to hear that students are beginning to get a very real sense of their own power and ability to enact change. At a recent faculty organizing meeting and in numerous conversations, I have made the case that Corbett’s cuts represent a decisive moment in the history and future of public education in PA — K-12 and higher education. In the case of higher education, the ability to roll back Corbett’s cuts depends a great deal on whether or not students will mobilize.
It is true that students have already mobilized. However, there are nagging questions as to whether or not students will be able to expand their current organizing and show up at local and state-wide rallies in numbers that will give state legislators, PASSHE officials, and the Governor pause. It is also true that students have been contacting legislators and are increasing their presence in Harrisburg as part of lobbying days. And yet that nagging question that Rick Smith asked me on his show last week still hangs above us all (my apologies for the rough transcription – a good reason why you should listen to his show and listen to my interview at the link above):
ME: What we’ve got is a State System of Higher Education which is really like the last promises to the citizens of Pennsylvania that they’ve got a shot . . . This is like a last stand in my mind. What they’re after is a fundamental change in the “common” part of our Commonwealth.
Rick Smith: I absolutely agree with you…but…it says you had a hundred fifty – two-hundred people out there today. I’m curious why you didn’t have a couple of thousand and why across the state…when are we going to see this? Because this affects everyone of those kids right now and the high school seniors that are coming up and the families…this is a massive, 54% cut. 54%!
There is just no getting around this question. Why indeed were there not thousands of students out that first day? Why on the APSCUF led protests around the state this past Tuesday, were there not thousands of students protesting on each and every campus?
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go back on the spirit of my last post to “keep laments for better days.” I am not lamenting. As a matter of fact, I feel more politically energized now than I have been in a couple of years. The work that students at KU and around the state are doing to get the word out, to organize buses to Harrisburg for the 11:30 am rally on Monday, March 28th on the Capitol steps is incredible. The speeches students gave at the St. Patrick’s Day rally at KU were powerful and moving. My point is, rather, that I worry that the majority of students, their families, and the citizens of PA don’t yet get how serious the current situation is. I worry that by the time the seriousness of Corbett’s cuts hits, it will be too late. And, frankly, I think it will much more difficult to reinstate funds to public education once they are eliminated. Corbett and his new breed of slash and burn politicians, are playing for keeps folks.
The cold truth of the matter is that administrators, politicians, and cable news talking heads have made a sport of attacking teachers and professors for their personal gain. They have been successful in convincing a vocal segment of citizens that teachers and faculty are the problem, are lazy, or just that “we” have it better off than “they” do. And, when it comes to higher education, there are only about 6,000 faculty members and coaches in PASSHE. There are over 120,000 students. When you take into account students attending state-related universities you are talking about a group of people who can effectively shift an entire election — very much in the way students in PA did during the 2008 election. The fact is, “they” — politicians, state administrators, self-interested slash and burn talking heads, and even Gov. Corbett, are afraid of a mobilized student body.
Photo ID is a solution in search of a problem. What will it solve? Not voter fraud since there’s no evidence that there is any. In fact, we already have a range of sensible safeguards on the books. Every first-time voter in a Pennsylvania precinct has to show ID. Thereafter, s/he must be listed in the District Register/poll book in order to vote by regular ballot. An example of the voter’s signature is kept on record and compared to the new one every time the voter signs in on election day. Just in case anyone has the bright idea to bypass legal requirements by impersonating someone else in a federal election, they’ll face five years in prison and fines of up to $10,000, on top of state penalties. With all of the election reforms we truly need, does this sound like an area of the law that needs attention?
So, why the need for a new law? Sure, you can jump aboard the Daryl Metcalfe fear express and buy into his stated purpose for introducing the bill: to ” protect against corrupt politicians, groups and individuals who might attempt to undermine our elections through the old time, “vote early, vote often or from beyond the grave’ or more recent ‘get out the illegal alien/non-United States citizens voting programs subject to the rule of law.'” Or, you might pause for a moment and consider the very real implications of introducing new, seemingly redundant voting requirements just as we get ready to enter the 2012 election cycle: suppress voter turnout. As the national organization Election Protection shows there is a move to introduce new versions of voter ID bills in 32 states (as well as other new voter hoops in additional states). Such measures are proven to suppress voter turnout:
The Washington Post’s Peter Wallsten reports that Republicans in state legislatures “are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state-and effectively keep some from voting at all.” A bill being introduced in New Hampshire “would permit students to vote in their college towns only if they or their parents had previously established permanent residency there,” and others would end Election Day Registration where it already exists. Election Day registration is a an important reform that ensures that problems with registration, clerical errors, or arbitrary deadlines do not create a barrier to the ballot box. Wallsten also wrote that legislatures in 32 states have proposed measures that would add an ID requirement or proof of citizenship. These requirements are especially discouraging impediments to low-income voters, students, recently-naturalized citizens, and other minorities.
The current ID law allows students to use their official university ID as proof of identification. Metcalfe’s legislation would prevent that and require all voters to show an official PA voter registration card. You might ask, “what’s the big deal,” until you begin to think through some very practical issues.
Efforts to get more college students registered to vote often happen on their college campuses and elections happen, for the most part, when college classes are in session. If the goal is to encourage citizens to participate in the democratic process, then you want to make it easier for people to register to vote and to exercise that vote. Since many students live in legislative district outside of the district in which their college or university is located, it would be easiest for students to vote on campus — meaning they would register to vote in the university’s district. The easiest form of ID to show as proof of residence is your college ID. Sure, students could change their official address on their driver’s license every year, or under Metcalfe’s bill they could change their Voter ID address every year. But you know the realities of that as well as I do. Heading the DMV to get my license renewed or my address changed is not something I want to do unless I am forced to do it.
And that’s the key to the Metcalfe’s proposed legislation: to suppress voter turnout by introducing enough confusion and inconvenience so that people say “forget about it.” No one can accuse Metcalfe or any other politician who votes for the legislation of directly attempting to suppress voter turnout. They can rely upon the realities of human behavior to make it look like the individual’s fault. Presto.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but I am with USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham on this one. Once you begin to track the kind of moves that are being made in the same states whose Republican Governors and/or legislatures are going after collective bargaining, public education, public services, and workers’ right, you can see the writing on the wall. In writing about Wisconsin’s newly proposed voter ID bill, Wickham is on the money:
Walker’s bill is a shoot-the-wounded assault on the Democratic Party’s base, which when combined with a voter ID law that’s also being pushed through Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature, could put the Badger State firmly in GOP hands for decades.
The proposed ID law would restrict the right to vote to people with military IDs, driver’s licenses and a state-issued ID card. Passports and photo ID cards issued to college students (even those from state universities) would not be acceptable.
College students and public unions are pillars of the Democratic base. Wisconsin’s ID law would suppress voter participation among students. A 2005 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute study found that 82% of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds did not have a driver’s license in the ZIP codes for neighborhoods near Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The study also showed that statewide, the majority of college-age blacks and Hispanics lacked driver’s licenses . . .
. . . Late last month, Texas’ Senate passed a voter ID law that requires people in that state to show a driver’s license, military ID, a passport, a state or citizenship ID card or a concealed handgun license before being allowed to vote. Over the past decade, Texas’ population grew to 25 million people. Hispanics were 65%, blacks 22% and whites just 4.2% of that population surge. Whites now make up less than half of all Texans and tend to be older. So not surprisingly, the Republican-controlled Senate made an exception to the ID law for people older than 70. Those voters need to show only a voter registration card to vote.
This is the nature of the war the GOP is waging. It’s a quest for political hegemony — and a fight Democrats cannot afford to lose.
A plan to dissuade college students from participating in the 2012 election> You bet. If you are going to wage a war on the middle-class like the Republicans in several states are doing – and like Gov. Corbett is doing — then you better find a way to prevent those folks who are pissed off the most from voting in the next election. To put in the words of comedian Lee Camp, “Evil People Have Plans” (thanks to Jay and his Best of the Left Podcast for including Camp’s rant in his most recent show).
Like I’ve been saying for a while now, we’re facing a game-changer folks. The outcome of our current struggles – in PA, WI, OH, MI, ID, IN, and around the country – will determine our immediate futures. Not only are we fighting for our individual well-beings, we are in the midst of deciding what kind of State and nation we are going to live in for the next generation. I’d love to hear evidence to the contrary, but that’s the way I see it at this point.
And, in PA, students are at the forefront of this game-changer. There are a lot of people saying their prayers every night that students will begin showing up in the thousands to rallies on their campus and in the State Capitol. We’ll have the next test on Monday, March 28th as students and faculty gather in Harrisburg to protest Corbett’s cuts. A bigger challenge that will confront students in the days to come will be whether they can sustain their efforts for the remainder of the semester and over the summer? The summer break has long been used by university administrators and politicians to disrupt and thwart student mobilizations. What is clear is that now is not the time for complacency. As Michael Moore put it during an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, “Everybody, up off the couch right now, please.”
I do want to be clear that I am not saying that resistance to Corbett’s cuts doesn’t require everyone to get up off the couch and get involved. PASSHE and other faculty should be showing up in droves on their campuses and in Harrisburg. Not only are our immediate livelihoods at stake, the nature of the institution that we have dedicated our lives to is under assault. And it’s true that university faculty are not the easiest bunch to get to show up either – even when their own jobs are at stake. So, we – faculty organizers – have our work cut out for us too. I mean, if faculty are not willing to fight a direct assault on higher education and, specifically, the very universities in which they work, then I am not sure what they would be willing to fight for. In my mind, organizing in opposition to Corbett’s cuts to higher education amount to a moral imperative for PASSHE faculty. A similar challenge is posed our AFSCME and SCUPA brothers and sisters.
However, in my gut I believe that our ability to resist Corbett’s cuts will succeed or fail depending upon students ability and willingness to mobilize.
I’ll close this post for now. I hope to write again later tonight about some of the serious problems with what I keep hearing from Democrats, Republicans, PASSHE officials and union leaders about decreasing the amount of Corbett’s cuts – I’m in the “no cuts to education” camp, not the “don’t-rip-off-both-my-arms,-just-my-left-one” camp. But for now, I’ll leave you with how the issue was framed in a recent editorial published in Public Opinion:
According to Associated Press, thousands of students and faculty staged demonstrations Tuesday at most of Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities. Our State System of Higher Education is targeted by Corbett to lose more than half its funding.
It was yet another example of the emerging push-back against a coordinated nationwide effort to use budget deficits as justification to enact highly ideological policy goals at the expense of the young.
Bear in mind, we’re talking about young people, the only demographic with the power to balance public policy favoring older folks. It’s also the only demographic to so consistently fail to vote, directly propogating the imbalance against its interests.
It’s usually considered a safe political bet to give them the shaft. But whenever students get agitated, politicians get nervous — because they’re used to safely ignoring their concerns.
Good. Politicians should be nervous. If they’re going to emasculate the business potential of our next generation of adults, they shouldn’t be allowed to rely on the standard election metrics.
We can only hope thousands more Pennsylvania students take inspiration from those already agitating for fairness, for shared sacrifice, for acknowledgment of their importance to our future.
We recommend they get to fighting now, because in a few months the moment could be lost.
Kutztown Univesity’s Rohrbach Library now has a guide that can help you understand what’s happening with the proposed budget cuts. In an age where everyone wants to turn to Google to provide them with scattered information that is not always reliable, the Rohrbach Library is doing a service to everyone in the Commonwealth who wants to know what’s happening with the budget by providing complete, reliable information all in one location.
The LibGuide includes a link to government documents, which include PDFs of actual state documents including the budget proposal. You can also learn about media coverage and opinions, read an overview of the key people involved, and find links to PA government pages. There’s also a page devoted to Marcellus Shale so you can learn exactly what’s happening with this industry that the Governor does not want to tax.
Please take the time to check out this LibGuide and educate yourself on the issues. Although this blog provides you with credible information, the best way for you to fight for education is to go to the primary sources and read these documents for yourself so you can form your own opinions.
Also remember that, in a time when there is an information overload and everyone wants to “just Google it,” there are information professionals you can turn to who are better than Google and who know where to find information that Google can’t find (yes, it’s true! Google can’t find everything). The information professionals at KU are proof of this (and let’s give credit to Tim Ballingall, the grad assistant who got this out there), so please don’t forget that as we fight for education we must also fight for libraries. Where else will you get free access to knowledge and people who are more than happy to help you on your quest for knowledge?
The Governor may not care about having an educated populace, but the Rohrbach Library does.
I am hoping that I will be able to post segments from the hearings. PCN broadcast the hearings live…Haven’t seen video up on their web site yet. In the meantime, here’s a little breakdown of yesterday’s hearings.
Christina J. Steffy
Kevin Mahoney
Amy LB
APSCUF-KU xchange 