For the past few weeks I've had a couple blog posts floating around in my head. I haven't really had one of those moments of madness, much like I did in the last two years, where I just decided to blog about something that bothered me. If you know me at all, you know I blog prolifically when I'm stressed. It may not be more than mindless babble, but it's something.
Three years ago I was sitting in a classroom that was too hot for comfort. I don't know what was on the agenda, but I think
Virgin in the Volcano was having us discuss Play It As It Lays or doing some grammar excercise where none of us - including her - could figure out a synonym for a particular word. Turns out the synonym was "bleak."
Just two years before that I had started attending North Hollywood High School as a giddy, little 13 year old boy. I expected great things from NHHS. I expected to take the entire Calculus sequence before graduating (and perhaps adding discrete math to that). I expected to take French. I expected excellence.
I got none of that.
Fast forward past Summer 2006 and all the way to August 2007 and you'll find me starting at UC Berkeley, finally feeling like I have found my place in the world. There I was, fresh off the "I just turned 17!" train, and I was a third-year student at one of the country's - the world's - best universities. It was unlike any feeling I had ever had. I was home.
Today, the word is once again "bleak."
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Before I graduated this past May, I was offered a research job at UC Berkeley. I gladly took it and couldn't believe that I was going to be a part of the greatness that I had come to know and love over the past two years. Once again, UC Berkeley had made me feel at home. However, I would have never known what the consequences of getting closer would be.
Now, as an employee of UC Berkeley, I've been given a front seat to the horror that is this state budget crisis. I've received the e-mails from the Chancellor, the University President, and just about everyone you can imagine. I know how bad it is. I know that, at one point, 400 jobs were on the chopping block. I know. And if horrifies me.
For two years I was away from my family. I was 400 miles away and only saw them on holidays. Had it not been for Berkeley, I would have been lost and alone in the world. Berkeley was my home, my family.
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I know that tough times call for tough measures. And I also know that closing a campus would save the UC system a lot of money and perhaps even save it from financial disaster, but I can't accept it.
I've never attended UC Merced. I've never even visited the place, but I know that it's the newest UC campus and that it just graduated its first class. I also know that it's destined for greatness, that it'll produce some amazing scholars that will change the world with their research, and I hope that if it has to be closed, that it won't go without a fight. I want it to go out kicking and screaming.
As I've said, Berkeley was my home. It still is. The UC system is my family. I will not let someone just rip a part of my family away. I will not accept the fact that our state is funnelling more money into prisons than it is into education. I will not accept the fact that education has been put on the back burner. I didn't accept it with K - 12, and I won't accept it now.
All I have to say is this: Don't fuck with my family.
Jon said it best,
"These vile creatures dare call themselves educators[?]
Let's stop this internal bleeding, and let's do it fast.
Will_I-Am
Comments (2)
Don't worry, Poodle. I'm working on paroling everyone. And Schwarzie's is too busy firing the nursing board right now to close a UC.
These sun-soaked, oyster taco-eating egotists want to protect themselves by picking on the weakest links.
Rich folks in the cities love to load their gullets, but they can be
downright snobby toward people and places producing anything that can’t
be uncorked, decanted and poured. A selfish and bad idea, rife with
snobbery, arrogance and condescension by some pontifical, pretentious
profs.