Yuchen Qu
Section A03
Week 4
From the first second I saw the title of the article “A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis”, the heartbreaking video professor showed us in the first lecture reappeared in my head: several
students kneeling on the ground, tortured by the pepper spray, with hundreds of
students around rebelling. However, carrying on reading the article written 6
years ago, I found the truth was more annoying. The administrators of UC
Berkeley and UC Davis showed two completely different attitudes towards the
Occupy movement. The chancellor of UC Berkeley focused on how to solve the problem,
thought about the dilemmas met by middle-class students, and used the MCap
program to helping them. In comparison, the chancellor of UC Davis tried to punish
students by pepper spraying them, blaming students for the $8,500 extra expense
for the repairing and
cleaning of lecture hall, and even tried to remove pictures and news from the
Internet to cover up the scandals instead of spending time on solving problems for students, who already endured
heavy burden of the expensive tuition. At that time, UC Davis worried more about
its reputation, rather than students. I’m an international student from a Chinese
middle-class family. Here is the reality. I have to pay three times as much
tuition than local students to attend the university in America to receive the same quality education. Also,
taking dollar-RMB exchange rate 1:6.7 into consideration, the decision of
sending me study here is a challenge for my family. University just treat me as
who can afford the tuition, and it doesn’t care about whether I’m from Chinese middle-class
family or not. Additionally, we international students are nearly impossible to
get the financial-aid. To be honest, after reading till the end, I’m really disappointed.
Not only due to the expensive tuition, but also because the university
didn’t concern about the students, and I feel like we are tools instead of
students.
Question:
In short times, tuition fees of public schools will keep
increasing because they have to upgrade the facilities and hire famous
professors, and this is the only way to keep the high-quality education. Is
there a better way that could keep the tuition low, while the university still owns good
education? And is there a better way students can let school hear their
opinions instead of Occupy movement and other kinds of movements?
Reference:
1. Markow, A. (2011,
December 19). A Tale of Two Campuses: Berkeley and Davis respond to Occupy
movements. Retrieved October 15, 2017
2. The Atlantic. (2017, March
31). [Digital Image] “Spending $1
Million to Get Rid of a Single Bureaucrat.” Retrieved
October 15, 2017 from
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