All over the world, students are rising up in protest of the relentless forces of neo-liberalism and austerity.
Last April, when the administration for the University of Puerto Rico system announced an $800 tuition increase, students demanded that the administration meet with a Negotiating Committee (consisting of students outside of the bureaucracy of student government) to come up with other solutions. Having ignored this request, students executed a strike that shut down seven of the 11 campuses for several months in protest. The universities immediately felt the impact, and the administration was forced to negotiate with the students.
Mid-November, when the University of California Regents approved an $822 increase in tuition, students protested the hike through demonstrations, building occupations and civil disobedience. In return, students were arrested, pepper-sprayed, and had guns pointed at them by police officers.
Late November, when conservative Members of Parliament (MP) in London announced a $4,800 tuition hike, 52,000 people descended upon the capitol to demand the resignation of the conservative MPs. Students at the University College of London are entering their 10th day of occupying the Jeremy Bentham Room on campus, and the university administration is threatening forcible removal.
For the last two months, students in Italy protested Parliament’s proposed education budget cuts and reforms that shift the burden of funding on the backs of families. Not only did 400,000 students block highways, airport runways, and railway stations, but students also occupied the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Yes. You read correctly. The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Last September, when the Arizona Board of Regents announced its plan to increase tuition by $4,000 to $6,000, Arizona students let the crickets respond for them.
The Arizona Constitution says, and has always said, that education shall be nearly free. But $12,000 for in-state tuition is far from free.
ASU has already launched an intense propaganda campaign to privatize education. Have you not noticed all the yellow billboards and advertisements describing us like we are a business? ABC 15 recently had a segment ridiculing all the grammar mistakes on these advertisements.
We are being denied our right to an education. When ABOR describes us as products instead of people, when President Michael Crow has described the universities as “enterprises” since 2007, it is apparent that the plan for Arizona’s universities is to increase costs until too many folks decide to forgo college because of the foreboding amount of debt it promises.
No one can hear complacency; silence is for cowards. This is our future. This is our state. Students are rising up all over world to challenge institutions of power. Students worldwide are not submitting to a feeling of helplessness, because we know that it is us who have progressed the world.
We just need to believe that we can make the difference. So I challenge you to give a damn. Dr. Crow will be at an open forum Dec. 7. ABOR will be meeting in Tucson Dec. 9.
Be heard. Do it for our communities, for our future, and for us.
Send your real talk to Athena at asalman3@asu.edu
