Week 5 Reflection Xiao_Zhang Section 03

In the reading The Imperial University Race, War, and the Nation- State, Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira talk about an event about how student who are oppressed by universities’ corrupted policies stand up and fight for “academia freedom”.  This article literally open up my thinking and give me a new perspective about what university is and what does it mean to students studying and all those educators contributing in this Educational Institute.

I used to believe that University is a place that belongs to all the people in this community – which means they are supposed to speak their voices easily and treated equally. However, it does not seem like the case. After read the article, it seems to me that university is more like a product, and business whose main purpose is earning money, rather than educating people with equity, freedom, honesty, love and peace. While the administrators of some Universities emphasize on and set up many rules about academic integrity for students and educators, they don’t really follow the integrity and the theme of equity by themselves. As a result, the administration of some university is not quite transparent – corruption happen. However, what’s more serious is that student and educators who are experiencing discrimination, biases, oppression cannot really fight for their freedom – because their university is not really theirs anymore. It become a property of its administrator, who is receiving the money from students, assigning the jobs to educators, but never really listen to their voices and spoil themselves with corruptible behaviors.

 That is the exact reason why so many marginalized students and educators have gotten enough of ignorance & discrimination and determined to stand up and fight for justice and greater good. However, such justice and bravery action usually was responded by “Paper Spray” and even worse attack. It is really sad to see things would happen like this. But I believe the justice day could definitely come when all marginalized group united together and defend for their “academia freedom”

Question: Should University be an business, if not, how could some university get out of current corruptible status?

Reference:
Chatterjee. P, Maira. S (2013). Race, War, and the Nation-State. The Imperial University. 1-52

UCD protests support students, decry debt (Unknown) Retrieved from: https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/ucd-protests-support-missouri-students-draw-attention-to-debt/