Two banners were dropped on the University of Illinois campus by a group of anonymous activists in the early morning of November 20th in solidarity with the UC occupations and the UC strike. This banner drop follows a three day strike in the UC college system, national and international solidarity actions with UC, and the recent local success of the Graduate Employee’s Organization in obtaining a fair contract.
One banner, hung off the English building, reads “Education is NOT for Sale. Support the UC strike.” The International Students Movement's statement “Education is not for sale” speaks to both the UC strike and the continuation of the fight against the privatization of public education in an attempt to make college more accessible. Another banner that briefly hung off the Alma Mater, alluding to cuts in the state budget and the continued pay disparity between administrators and other workers at the university, read “Chop from the Top. Solidarity with UC.”
In the UC college system, students are facing a fee increase of 32% over the next two years. The fee increase, approved by the Board of Regents on November 18th, includes an increase from $7,788 to $8,373 by winter quarter and to $10,302 from summer 2010 through the following academic year. This fee increase marks the ninth time in seven years that the UC Regents has supported an increase in the tuition fees of undergraduates. The UC college system is also increasing layoffs, furloughs and reducing nonunion salaries and retention rates.
The UC strike is just one fight in the battle against the privatization and increasingly limited access to public higher education. Locally, the graduate student union held a two day strike for a fair contract, eventually winning contract language that increases the minimum stipend, guarantees tuition waivers and provides better access to health and child care. In Champaign-Urbana, California, and New York, students are standing in solidarity with the struggles of those who seek to maintain public access to higher education.
The struggle isn't just here, it's everywhere!
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Alma Mater Banner Drop
Vandalism
This is vandalism. Whoever did this should be caught and arrested.
So True
Hopefully, the members of the Board of Regents will all be arrested soon for their destruction of the system of affordable education in California. Maybe putting the cuffs on some in the California legislature will help, too.
Spineless in California
Spineless in California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California was on the mark when he said this week that the state needed to change policies that spend more money on prisons than on the state’s once-vaunted higher education systems, which are being bled to death in budget cuts. But Mr. Schwarzenegger was way off the mark when he suggested that the answer was to privatize prison services or to pass yet another constitutional amendment, this time to limit prison spending.
States that privatize prisons sometimes save money, but they can also buy trouble by ceding control to companies that put profit first and inmate welfare a distant second. That would be disastrous for the California prison system. It is already under pressure from scores of court orders that require it to reduce its growing prison count and provide adequate mental, medical and dental services, as well as better care for the disabled.
It would generally be impossible for the state to unilaterally lower prison spending without first cutting the prison population dramatically. And because so much prison spending is nondiscretionary, a constitutional amendment that reduced spending — without cutting the prison population — would be doomed to failure. It would also draw the ire of judges who have rightly run out of patience with the state’s long list of failures in this area.
The only real way for California to cut prison costs is to reverse sentencing policies that have filled its prisons to bursting and have driven up costs by about 50 percent over the last decade alone. Among other things, too many minor offenders are sent to jail for too long.
The Legislature tinkered at the margins of this problem last year. But real sentencing reform has proved impossible in the State Assembly, where lawmakers live in fear of the politically powerful corrections officers’ union lobby, which enforces the status quo by labeling reformers as soft on crime.
Sleight of hand will not cut prison costs in California. To do that, lawmakers will need to find their spines.
Copyright 2010 The New York Times
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