Save Our University From What?

An incongruity of constituencies -- students, a few professors, unions representing gardeners, janitors, and administrative assistants, old-time revolutionaries left over from the Free Speech Movement, and demonstration-nostalgic alumni -- joined forces, a few thousand strong, at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza at noon today for a demonstration to "save the University," presumedly from budget cuts enacted by the UC Regents this summer. The argument, inferred from all the signage -- UC is not BP, Chop from the Top, and Keep the University Public -- is that cuts should be made in the administration not in staff and faculty wages and definitely not by raising student tuition.

A single drummer accompanied the sign-carrying protestors at the one-day UC faculty walkout Sept. 24, and the loudest support at the Sproul Gate entrance to the campus on Telegraph Avenue came via honking horn from a Berkeley Lab bus that snaked down Hearst every 20 or so minutes. On the Student Union steps, a marimba player trying to scavenge some cash scattered mellifluous notes through the crowd.

One speaker -- he spoke with a slightly British accent and had white hair -- urged the university to make ethnic diversity an absolute priority, but didn't say whether that meant in the faculty, student population, staff, or governance. I looked up the UC Board of Regents -- all 18 appointed members who made the latest budget cuts -- and noticed it is quite an ethnically diverse group. I wonder if budget cuts really do directly affect ethnic diversity, and whether anyone has documented the effect. You'd think the lower the staff pay, the more ethnically diverse the staff (just to be argumentative).

I used to work for the Office of the President at UC for nine years, in the '70s until 1981. I was in a union and participated in many a demonstration for better wages and benefits, for collective bargaining for all UC employees, for greater transparency of UC's budget and operations. I also went to every UC Board of Regents meeting held in San Francisco and noticed that most of the appointees spent little time or thought on any of the items up for discussion. Ronald Reagan, when California Governor and ex officio regent, used to make a dramatic entrance about 10 minutes before the end of each meeting obviously wearing a bullet-proof vest that puffed up his chest like a canary about to sing. Former Governor Jerry Brown always attacked a few items on each agenda with his rabid Jesuit righteousness but it always seemed more for show than for fundamental difference.

If I sound cynical it's because I've seen too many cycles of change that change nothing. Public rallies for saving universities miss the point.

Comments

[JV]

Once American universities were the best in the world. Kids from nowhere with a calling and little else could find a way to get in, and a way to pay for it. They came out and built a new world. They learned to think in 10,000 ways.

Today other places and other nations are taking over and turning out the thinkers. Their children from nowhere are walking in sitting down and becoming the future.

Universities and colleges in America are little more than glorified high schools with entitled professors who have a job for life and know so little about it.

The falling will continue, hopefully some will be able to get up after hitting the pavement and know what it means again to build the future and not just revel in past glories.