There are whispers of something foreboding. Whether we realize it, our lives as people living in a world contingent upon a sense of global symbiosis — which determines how we go about living within the bubble of our present and imminent future — is at stake.
That phantom of a crisis has exploded into relative fruition. The erosion of the international economy hit home in a fashion so inimical that the foundation upon which students at ASU are reliant, is at serious risk for implosion.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, and House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, have proposed to slash $1.5 billion from education budgets for the next year and a half in order to help resolve the state budget deficit.
Arizona has been one of the lowest-ranking states in education funding for years, and to slash an already faltering education budget by such an incredible margin does nothing to help propel the state forward as a viable and progressive candidate for a world in which knowledge is key to economic stability and productivity.
When ASU alone brings in almost $3 billion dollars to the state economy, why propose such a malicious measure to impair the success of the only means by which we can salvage what it lost? Well, let’s take a look at the stances of those two men who pose a detriment to the education funding needed to posit us two steps forward, as opposed to back.
Pearce’s Web site alleges that ASU President Michael Crow did not tell the whole story on higher education funding. On the site, Pearce said that his proposal would only cut “6 percent of their total budget if you look at all the dollars.”
This is an inaccurate figure, as some of ASU’s programs are self-sufficient and dependent upon the funding they receive in order to substantiate themselves. Football, meal programs and even the bookstore use this modus operandi. Sure, there is outside funding from alumni and other private organizations, but isn’t a state university entitled to enough state funding to substantiate itself without relying upon private resources as an actual financial underpinning?
Pearce and his counterpart Kavanagh are notorious for their Senate Bill 1108, which attempted to “inculcate values of American citizenship” by prohibiting any organizations promoting the values of different cultures and races within universities. This is an injustice to higher education, as it advances ignorance in dissension with the tenants of diversity and knowledge upon which our education is based.
A quality higher education should be heeded as a staple for furthering the productivity and future of Arizonan citizens. Instead, because of people like Pearce and Kavanagh, its meaning has been butchered and reduced to less than a priority. Pearce and Kavanagh’s proposals are consistent with their fallacious ideologies of looking at things from a short term rather than a sustainable long-term perspective.
Students, stand up for your education. Do not let those in charge of something so vital do something so deleterious to the only solution that can turn the tables around. Knowledge is priceless and by putting such a small price on something so big, only little can emerge from it.
Reach Alana at alana.arbuthnot@asu.edu.
