Week 4 - Janine Macaraeg

Janine Macaraeg

Section A01

Week 4

I have rarely to never gave much thought into how schools were ran let alone universities. In my grade school years, all I knew was there was a principal, vice principal, teachers, and other faculty members who were all a part of a school district. But who knew it was much bigger than that? In addition to Professor Valverde’s “The Fight Tower,” Fredrik deBoer’s “Why We Should Fear University, Inc.” continues to shed light on what life is like for professors, or in his case instructors, at the university. He describes the little garden at Purdue University as “perhaps the only place left at the university that is not meticulously landscaped and stage-managed” (p. 1). This description symbolizes the state of Purdue, and many other universities; how they are turning into corporation-like institutions which even shows in the title of his article as he included “Inc.”.

One thing that I always believed in was for students to have the right to express their minds, beliefs without being penalized for it – I think we all have that expectation wherever we are. However, deBoer states that there is “…a sense of ambient incrimination that does more to pre-empt potentially unpopular ideas than to punish the ones that are actually expressed” but these same critics are silent in regards to “structural racism and sexism” (p. 3). This is where the university begins to act like a corporation rather than an institution where everyone is entitled to the the freedom to speak his/her mind. Furthermore, deBoer says, “…critics of campus political culture almost always misidentify where the problems arise: not from passionate student activists…but from corporatism, the corporatism that has come to infect the soul of the American university” (p. 3, 4). The students are not the problem, but the way that the university handles itself. When it comes to student activism, how can students freely express their beliefs and ideas without having to be careful about the way they do it or without getting into trouble? How can we possibly get rid of this corporate-like environment? 

References:

DeBoer, F. (2015, September 9). Why We Should Fear University, Inc. Against the corporate taming of the American college. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved October 12, 2017.

Westbrook, Melissa. (2012, Nov 12). [Digital Image]. Retrieved October 12, 2017, from http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2012/11/seattle-schools-community-forum-teacher.html