Thursday, April 16, 2015

Fighting Privatization, Occupy Activists at CUNY and UC Kick Into High Gear

Tony Tran
Section 2
Week 4
Fighting Privatization, Occupy Activists at CUNY and UC Kick Into High Gear

            After looking at this article, I observed the pattern of events that lead to so much problems. I saw that privatizing public college institutions is good for the money, but bad in every other way. Because private companies can wave its bling to a college, they are allowed to effectively control the college and exploit them as much as they want. And because all of the high-up administrators have some sort of connection to the private corporations, they can care less about the students. I read about Berkeley’s Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and researched more of our own UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to see if they had any point of view that could have affected their choices.

At least for our chancellor, I personally believe she was not completely responsible for the pepper spray incident (she allowed peaceful police action without arrests or real force however it was her mistake that she didn’t logically know that protesters wouldn’t give up); however, I personally believe most of the fault was on the police force that made really bad decisions.

But the point I really want to get into is that UC systems are still raising the tuition for students even after the incident. What I cannot comprehend is the fact that ‘why not lessen the amount of spending on creating or embellishing more college structures and use that to lessen the staggering monetary pressures of students’? Every year now I see or hear about renovations or creations of new UC buildings. All I think is how they are unnecessary and primarily benefits the UC by making them sound better and larger, but it is we, the students, that are back-breakingly funding all of these excess projects.

Question: Is all of the college student money really put into good use? How much is allocated for special projects? Is there any focus on creating better class environments and not just creating small extra student buildings?


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