Our student fees have increased once again.  Just last quarter, my parents had trouble getting my student payments together, and this resulted in a hold on my classes.  Now I have to crash my three vital classes for the winter quarter, as they are already full.  I understand that our payments for education are necessary, but with such high tuition, I begin to wonder where the money is going.  How can I be sure that my family’s hard-earned dollars are going towards a positive future in our education system?  In this letter I only ask this: that our money be well-spent!

Teachers are of the highest concern, and all professors should be awarded good salaries and benefits.

The new building on campus should be practicing sustainable measures: install efficient solar panels on exposed roofs; use recycled materials whenever possible; install low-watt lighting through all school buildings; architecturally design new structures to have naturally good insulation (like many of the new UCSD buildings).

More campus gardens should be started, with classes responsible for cultivation, moving towards the campus providing much of its own food.  The food eaten and thrown away from dining halls should be used in compost to enrich the garden soil.

Install an area on campus where paper can be recycled, pulped, and re-pressed into useable sheets.  The school could even sell the paper back to students at a cheap price for a buy-back on their investment.

Increase funding to our graduate programs.  They are the ones making breakthroughs.

Continue to offer a wide variety of majors and minors instead of cutting them.  And please don’t raise our student fees again if none of these measures are being taken.

Thank you for your time.
Elan Saltman
Student at UC Santa Cruz

A New Path

Support
Saving
Sovereignty
Surmise
Sustainability.
Silent
Sunrays,
Significant
Solar,
Suddenly
Serenity.
Sufficient
Supply,
Surplus
of sky.

Dreaming of a future where nature won’t die.
When will evolution succeed?

I groan with loans.
The low drone of tuition’s tone has blown
Into my zone, a stinking cyclone of debt cologne.
I am thrown, prone and alone, into stone
So cold and unknown my own bones moan.
I cannot compete, cannot condone the well-known
Storm of the Leone trombone.
The crone has shown I must postpone
(Disown!) my dreams…
It seems the schemes of the supreme regime
Have flowed downstream to the extreme.

I scream.

As a middle-class white male, the tuition fee hike will not bar me from going to college. But it will increase my loans to an ungodly amount. The fee raise has been long coming, but for people like me who qualify for hardly any financial aid, it’s an oppressive weight that will take decades to pay off. This poem is meant to reflect the announcement of the fee hike, and what it means to me when it goes into effect. I understand the state’s economy is no one-person’s failure, but the collective mistakes of individuals in authoritative positions have finally flowed downstream onto us, the students.

And paying more to cover someone else’s mistakes is unacceptable.

Beepbeepbeep
Beepbeepbeep
beepbeepSLAM

John pulled his cold hand back under the covers and groaned.  Similar groans emanated from the three other beds in the small dormitory.  One by one, each of the students crawled out of their bed into the brisk, seven-o’clock air that seeped through the room’s windows.  John put on a dirty shirt and a pair of unwashed pants, which were all he had until he could find the spare change to wash his laundry.  Anthony stood at the room’s communal mirror combing his hair into a respectable shape.  Joshua dug out his toothbrush and went to clean the foul taste out of his mouth.  Eric sat down at his computer and continued writing the essay he had left the night before.

All four boys lived together on campus at UC Santa Cruz.  John’s parents made just enough in combined income to pay for most of John’s fees, but their family relied on the school to cover the financial gap.  Anthony’s mother was a schoolteacher raising three kids on her own.  Both Joshua and Eric’s parents were on unemployment, having been laid off recently.

The boys had all applied for scholarships, but only Joshua and Anthony had been lucky enough to receive any money.  Eric had to take out loans that would put him close to a hundred thousand dollars in debt by the time he got out of college.  Joshua had to take out loans to cover the rest of his financial gap.  Anthony had to work two jobs in addition to being a full time student in order to make it through college.  And John had to take the maximum amount of credits as well as work-study so he could spend as little time in college as possible.

Anthony and John walked with one another to the front door and out into the cold, dim morning light.  Outside, the faint sound of sirens could be heard from the direction of the campus entrance.

“Great,” muttered Anthony.  “More students blocking the school entrance in protest against the fee raises.”

“What are you going to do about them?” asked John.

“Ignore them.  They’ll get removed by the cops eventually, just like every other demonstration that students try against those who can make executive decisions.”

“I was talking about the fee raises.”

“Oh.  I think I’ll have to get another job, keep applying for scholarships, and beg the school to take off some of the burden.  You?”

“I’ll try for scholarships too, but because my parents make just enough money for me to not be financially eligible for anything, I’ll probably have to take out loans and take summer courses while I work my ass off to get money for next year.”

Both boys were silent, listening to the ringing of far-off sirens.

“Dude, why can’t the state just give us money and we wouldn’t have to go through all of this?” asked John of no one in particular.

“Because,” Anthony said.  “The state feels it is more important to fund jails than schools, and the government feels it is more important to fund the killing of people in the Middle East than to fund public education.”

“Doesn’t the state get that the less people in school, the more people in jail, and by taking our money, they’re making the need for more prisons?”

“Come on, John.  Have you ever known the government to do what’s best for the students?  And for the people?”

John was silent. In the meantime, Joshua had exited the building behind them and walked up to Anthony and John.

“What you guys up to?” Joshua asked.

“Whining about the fee raises,” answered John.  “What are you planning on doing to raise the extra money?”

“I’ll have to try and get a job, and if that fails, take out another loan or two.  I don’t even know what Eric’s going to do.  That guy can’t take out any more loans and the school’s already refused him financial aid.”

“Yeah,” added Anthony.  “The school doesn’t have any money any more, ’cause the state stopped giving our public school public funds.”

“That’s what I’m on about,” said Joshua, throwing his hands in the air.  “We all pay taxes, right?  So why doesn’t our tax money go towards public education?”

“Because,” John answered, matter-of-factly.  “They would rather line their pockets and shoot other people than make sure ‘we the people’ of this nation grow up educated and able to be productive, happy citizens.  Why would the people in charge care about any of us?  The people who make the rules individually have more money than all three of our families combined.  They can sip champagne in hot tubs and eat expensive food every day while we rack up debt and break our backs just to get a public education.”

“Yep,” agreed Joshua.

“Uh-huh,” said Anthony, nodding his head.

The siren continued to wail its woeful tune in the distance.  Each of the three boys could feel its sorrowful song echoing their own despair.

by Veronica Glover, vglover@ucsc.edu

I’m so sad.
do you want to know why?
I go to the same school as a really hot guy.

But come winter quarter he won’t be around.
Fee hikes, student strikes, and turmoil abound.

We used to cuddle in the library,
but shortened hours started cock-blocking me.

Aside from that, I’m stressed out at home.
My parent can’t seem to help me get loans.

My next bill is due December 17th
I’m so worried I can barely think.

Maybe I’ll get a job and turn my focus away
From my college life because I need money.

You have no right to do this to me.
How dare you make school harder than it needs to be?

This Christmas I’ll ask Santa Claus for financial aid.
I hope it’s not all just so the Regents get paid.

I’m poor as heck and I don’t know what to do,
But I’m not alone. This is hurting my friends too.

And we blame you.

Thanks to financial aid, my family’s contribution stays the same as the grants that support me grow. It’s Thanksgiving and so I give thanks for these grants, thanks that my father doesn’t make enough as a single parent to put me through college, thanks that the economy has killed his business, that self-employed artists and technicians and directors and producers and photographers and writers are a dying breed. Thanks that in order to get financial aid, I spend hours filling out a form and spend months worrying that maybe this time, I won’t get the aid I need. Thanks that I sell my soul away to selective services. But I’m thankful that there’s no draft and that I’m a girl so none of that matters.

I am thankful for these grants because they’ve given me a chance to go to college. I’ve only been here a year and a quarter but I’ve learned so much, and I’m not just talking about classes, though I’ve had some amazing ones. I’m thankful to be here at UC Santa Cruz where I can take a walk whenever I want through the forest that surrounds my dorm, where I can climb trees and explore caves. At this campus there is always more to discover. I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful I didn’t end up going to an urban university or something so small and painfully suburban that it creates its own landscape out of concrete and meticulously-maintained lawns. Being here, I have changed so much through my experiences. I’ve made memories with the people I’ve met here. I’ve gotten the chance to become more independent and live on my own. I am thankful for all this, and more, but I will stop before this becomes a love letter for my university.

I spent this Thanksgiving with my little cousins. I say little, but they’re almost grown now. And I wonder, will they be able to get a chance like mine? Maybe they don’t have much money either, but their parents are still married and they own a big house instead of renting a little one. It’s different, though, because they live in a suburb, where things are cheaper. But location isn’t taken into account when you’re filling out the FAFSA. It’s not taken into account that my grandparents helped my aunt and uncle buy their house, just that they own a house and thus it’s property. So what will happen to my little cousins?

What about the student who doesn’t get financial aid or grants that fluctuate with every new “fee” thrown at us? (I’m about to look into some kind of class-action lawsuit here, because no matter what they call it, $10,000 is not some small fee, it’s tuition, which is unconstitutional for public higher education in California.) Anyway, what about the student who can’t afford their own public education? The student in the margins of a class structure. For a paper, I was looking up the different classes in terms of economic wealth. Did you know there’s no middle class? Sure, there’s upper middle class and lower middle class, but that really just means upper and lower class since there is no middle middle class. So what about the people who fall between? Do they just slip through the cracks of society?

No learning, no memories, no independence. No growing up. I wonder what happens to children who never learn to grow up? Who never get that critical lesson in independence? Ever heard the word “adultescence?” Adultescents are everywhere. If my thinking is correct, individuals make up society. In that case, we are socially screwed. Try running the United States with a bunch of irresponsible lawmakers who never learned how to be independent from their parents. I guess that wouldn’t happen, though, because there would always be people rich enough at the top of the structure to fork over the exorbitant amounts of cash necessary to pay for college. Then we’d be split even further apart.

I am aware I’m complaining without providing any real solutions. Okay, fine. I could spout all the things you already know. About Prop 13, about the budget, about the two-thirds majority. I know you’ve heard all that. You’ve probably heard about this too but it’s worth much more attention than it has received. We need to look at the problems of society to see why we have more prisoners in California than in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined. Lack of education, lack of chances. Stop spending the money on keeping nonviolent offenders away from the rest of us and put it to creating a society in which everyone is given a chance so there is no need for prisons. Instead of sentencing us to the rest of our lives, show us an education and we’ll show you a society in which bars are no longer needed.

I’ve heard the expression before, as I’m sure you have, that “we are the future.” What does that mean? We don’t know. We’re not educated. We’re not growing up. Why don’t you tell us? Or better yet, stop thinking about us in the future and think about us in the present. We’re here. Do something before we have no future.

I didn’t like Thanksgiving much until I went to college. Now I enjoy coming back home and seeing my family and friends. I know how much I have to be thankful for. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten the chance to go to college? I’d probably still be living at home, going to Thanksgiving dinner but not understanding the real purpose of it, the reality of the holiday. The reason why it’s even important; the reason why it’s more than just hours of football and consuming mass quantities of turkey. I’m thankful that I understand it now; I’m thankful that I’m thankful.

I am thankful for the opportunities that have been given to me. I am not writing for myself. I’m writing for the student who’s just like me except that they can’t afford this any longer. The thing is, I couldn’t afford it either without federal government aid. But we need more than this – we need the state government to aid us too.

It’s Thanksgiving. Give someone a way to figure out the holiday. Give them something to be thankful for: a low-cost, high-quality education.

Thanks.
Katharine Van Amburg
UCSC

On November 18th, 2009, at 3:49 PM, I was sent an e-mail that was meant to inform me that both entrances to UC Santa Cruz were blocked by protesters in solidarity against the 32% tuition fee raise.

That same day, I left my house, and my computer at 3:27 PM to go eat dinner and then go to class. It was for Creative Writing, and my poem was getting workshopped. I wouldn’t let a little protest stop me from getting there.

It wasn’t little.

As I stepped outside the front door, I heard a cacophony of noise coming from what I could only assume as the main entrance of campus. (I was lucky enough to live this close, really.) It was a little odd, I thought, but I would push through if I had to.

I started walking toward the sidewalk, but before I could take three steps, a city bus drove right past me on my tiny residential street, in some cosmic way to tell me, “All bets are off, kid.” That never happened. The 16 bus never went on this street. It was supposed to be on Bay Street, not on Nobel, right there.

Fine then, I thought. I pulled out my phone and called my friend Nathan to give me a ride, if he was willing. And he was. In a minute, he pulled up beside the curb in front of me. He lived conveniently close just down the street.

“I think we should go up Western to Empire Grade and go through the West Entrance,” he said as I slid into the car.

“I was just about to say that,” I replied.

He drove us a grand total of 200 feet before we were stuck in a glut of cars all going toward Empire Grade, the only road that led to the West Entrance.

“Crap,” I said, rolling down the window to look around. “Traffic must be getting detoured through here.”

“When’s your class?” He asked.

“Five.”

“Oh, okay, we’ve got plenty of time.”

Time well spent. Almost. It took 45 minutes to get a third of the way to the entrance, but we entertained ourselves by guessing what was around the next corner, watching the surplus pedestrians going up and down, and examining the cars surrounding us. All in all, it was fun, but it didn’t take much longer for me to worry.

In front of us, cars were turning around and giving up hope, and the line only seemed to move when they did. Not good.

It was time to abandon ship.

“Just let me out here and I’ll walk the rest of the way. It’s going to suck, but it won’t be getting any better just sitting here.”

“If you’re sure,” Nathan said, leaning to check if any cars ahead were moving.

I wished Nathan luck getting back home and got out of the car just beyond the arboretum, with about half a mile to go to the entrance and God-knows-how-much to the Crown classrooms.

(For those of you not fortunate enough to live in Santa Cruz, there’s a huge vertical climb from any given place on the southern half of the campus to anywhere on the northern half. There’s also only a theater and some housing on the southern half with a nice big farm separating the two.)

I climbed onward, passing car after car after truck, not bothering to make eye contact with anyone walking the opposite direction. It felt like some kind of walk of shame, like I was a weirdo who wanted to go to class on the day we were supposed to in solidarity against tuition increases.

I passed a tattered sign in the shadow of Oakes College on the side of the road that said “Slow: Children’s Play Area.” I laughed, especially since it was surrounded by sharp briar bushes. Gotta take care of the future generations.

Any kind of emotion other than anger drained from me once I found out what the e-mail failed to tell me. A throng of people, most with signs, kept the cars from entering through the awkward little West Entrance. There wasn’t any kind of clear chant, just a dull roar of conversation.

I was too tired to do anything, though. I wasn’t what most would call “in shape.” But sohelpmeGod, if anyone even said a word to me as I passed through that glut of people, I would snap. I was ready at a moment’s notice to give a tirade to any poor soul that bothered to stand in my way and lecture me. Fortunately, no one did, and I didn’t do anything I would later regret.

Just as I was finished getting through the group, I heard a few of them arguing.

“You’re actually thinking about letting them in?!” one said.

Yes, I thought, that’s a stupid idea, because after all, why would you want to let someone into campus to go to class? Clearly the way to show we’re upset about the tuition increases is to be apathetic and not go. I grumbled these kinds of thoughts until a campus bus appeared from a parking lot.

I sprinted toward the bus stop, which proved to be extremely difficult given the ascent I’d already made to get to the campus entrance. But if I could just make it to the bus stop, I could still have time to eat dinner…

He waited for me. I wish I asked him his name so I could mention it here, but I owe a lot to that bus driver. Thank you, whoever you are. I spent the trip from the West Entrance to Crown panting and breathing and overall just freaking out the people around me. It was still a pain to traverse Crown’s infamous Cardiac Hill, but it felt like a speed bump compared to the Everest of Empire Grade.

And I still ate dinner. I ate it faster than Speed Racer talks, but I managed to do it. And I still made it to class on time.

In that class, we talked about the protest, the unsettling feelings we had about the fee raises and the difficulty in getting around. I heard horror stories of people on buses getting thundered upon by rouge hands and fists. I sat and complained, but felt guilty that I wasn’t doing something. After all, I was in the same boat as those jerks who blocked the entrance, and I was still sympathetic to their problems.

And then we came up with an idea, something that molded and changed into what you’re reading now, the collection of stories and poems that show that we are students and we are people. That we all are affected by this increase.

As much as I hated the protesters blocking the West Entrance on that Wednesday, I still know that they just wanted to show how much they care about their education. I completely disagree with their methods, but they are doing something. And now, so am I.

I don’t want to imagine myself being an opposing force to the protesters, but I don’t want to count myself as one of them. Someone recently asked me to pardon their fatigue because they were “fighting for education last weekend.” Oh, how noble, when you put it like that. I spent Wednesday fighting to go to class. It doesn’t even sound like we were on opposite sides. And really, we aren’t.

It won’t be easy, finding a solution to the lack of funds, but punishing the very students who make up the universities by raising tuition isn’t the answer. For some, the impact is minimal, and they’ll receive a slightly larger check in the mail to pay for their schooling.

But where does that leave me? The son of a middle-class couple who saved up their money for their child’s college education? All of a sudden, that money is running out a lot faster than it should, and I might not be able to stay at the same school without taking a full-time job or nefarious loans. My mother told me that this is exactly what she wanted to avoid when I first started going to college, that she had to do it as a student and wanted me to focus only on my studies.

I know that each of those protesters who pissed me off, blocked the road, and knocked on the buses are in a similar situation. I can’t ignore that, and I can’t hate them for it. Not only that, but there are thousands of students who also disagree with the protesters’ methods but are in the same boat.

My name is Eric Chase. I am a Film and Digital Media Major at UC Santa Cruz. I have a family that saved money my entire life to pay for college. I like to get together with my friends on weekends and I have a terrible habit of procrastination, but still manage to get things done, on time and with good quality. I am a human being.

And I can’t afford to learn, just like ten thousand other students.

Name:
The UCSC protestors do NOT represent me!

Category: 
Student Groups – Social Groups

Description: 
Yes, we’re against the 32% fee hikes but damaging buildings, graffiti, blockades, and unnecessary occupations are ANNOYING, RUDE, AND INCONVENIENT!

The UCSC protestors do not constitute a majority of the UCSC undergraduate population.

We’ve been referred to as the “Silent Majority.” We’re not into radical tactics and we have our own beliefs along with our own means of expressing it.

Join this group                 Ignore

 As your eyes scan the latest news–“Kerr hall protest ends; clean-up may take days”–screams erupt from beneath your window.

 “Fuck you, 32!” “Fight back!”  “Organize!”   

 You look outside and see your roommate heckled by a mob of cardboard sign-wielding occupiers as they march up the hill to occupy something else.  Their yells cut the silence with a knife and echo in aches through the heads of studying students.  Others wait at the bus stop for buses that won’t be coming, stopped at the gate by the not-so-peaceful protesters.  Bus drivers stop in the streets and refuse to go on.  You are late for class.  Hundreds of others cannot even enter campus.  Your professor is forced to cancel a lecture that many cannot attend, and you are stuck walking back, your work wasted.

What are we fighting for?
An education?  A price? 
What is the price of education?
What is the price of fighting for education?

Click. 
You receive a new Facebook invitation.
It’s called “The UCSC protesters do NOT represent me.”
You read through the details
Your mouse hovers over the “Join” button.

….stop.

Hold on a second.  There’s something missing here.

Think for a moment: what do the protesters represent, exactly? 

They represent… crisis.
They represent… panic.
They represent anger hiding behind calm faces.
They represent the misery of paying off a lifetime of debt.

They represent all that is irrational in a 32% fee increase.

Their methods may be irrational, but so is this: so is paying more for less.  So is paying for furloughs and lay-offs and impacted majors that you can’t get into and larger classes that no longer teach you so much as they talk at you.  So is funding the maintenance of the more prestigious schools that you don’t attend while your own school suffers.  So is paying to study at a research-based school whose research in unattainable because the library hours were cut. 

It makes no sense.

And so, we are angry.  And so, we gnash and writhe, and our anger swells and occupies buildings and blocks off roads and rips up electrical cords.  It trashes things and lashes out at a broken system that doesn’t pay for its profits that don’t profit us. 

It’s irrational.  But what is?  What part of this system doesn’t screw another part over?  Which side of the coin can be face up without putting another down?

The UCSC protesters do not represent me -
They represent a broken system. 
They represent a foundering economy.
They represent the sinking financial situation of most of America.

They represent the problem.

Now…

Who will represent the solution?

Signed sincerely,

Kaitlin Lindros

A Literature and Sociology Major
And Sophomore at UC Santa Cruz

Stuck in the middle
Of an economic crisis
I have enough
But not enough
To avoid living my life in debt.

Because I’m well off
I get no aid
Because I’m not rich
My bills aren’t paid.

And so
I’m stuck in the middle -
A class all my own
A large class
Of floundering masses
That will soon sink
Down, down
Until
We’re all low
And you, the administration,
The men fishing for profit,
Will be left alone
Above
Casting empty nets
For fish
That no longer swim.

This poem describes the fate of the middle class after the fee increases. I belong to this middle class and face the dilemma of financing my college education. The only financial aid I receive is loans, loans that I will very likely be paying off for a very large portion of my life. I was ready to accept paying for the loans in exchange for a quality education. However, now the fee increases are making these loans even more expensive at the COST of my good education. They are simultaneously making me pay more while giving me less. They say that part of the fee increases will go towards helping the needy students pay for the fee increases – but what about me? Who will help ME pay for the fee increases?

I ask my readers, then, to consider a future in which the middle class of today will become lower class as more and more people like me go into debt. Consider a future when all that is left are the richest of the rich… and the rest of us: the poor. What will it take for the rich to provide us aid? Will they wait until we are ALL needy? Or will they try and find a way to fix this?

The state of higher education in California is a travesty.  I have no choice but to speak out against the actions that have been taken to undermine my generation.  As Mario Savio stated so eloquently in 1964 when he was speaking at Sprow Hall during the Free Speech movement:

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Generations of students have gone through the UC system since then.  Isn’t it interesting that we now find ourselves at a similar crossroads, where the students demand to be listened to but are dismissed because of their radical views concerning equality?  And isn’t it interesting that the gaze has not been turned to those who have caused such inequality, to those who truly are radical in their persistent devalorization of our education? 

This is the legacy that you have all helped create: the legacy of the machine; the legacy of the elite indiscriminately using the masses to maintain its own wealth.  To this I ask: Did you honestly think that the issue of the ideological Baby Boomers would sit idly by as the Regents tried to maintain their assets by devastating ours? Could anyone have been as disillusioned as to think that we would go without a fight?

My generation has inherited a vast array of mistakes: a devastating state budget deficit, a nationwide economic recession, and a worldwide national reputation of ignorance.  I would mention the physical damage that we have caused our environment, but that is a different letter.  We are overwhelmed by the job ahead of us.  We are overwhelmed as to how to clean up the mess that you all have created for us.  And we are more overwhelmed by the fact that in 2009, less than 20% of college students attempting to find jobs actually got one, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers.  It appears that our future is as grim as the present.

The Regents’ approval of a 32% increase in tuition was an attempt to compensate for the lack of state funding of the UCs. The money has to come from somewhere, right? 

But rather than coming up with solutions, you have taken the path of the coward, trying to save your own hides.  But you have overlooked details that you yourselves have created.  You have overlooked my generation.  We are the product of these Universities of California, and we will not go gently into that good night.  For the machine can break—a detail that has been overlooked.  The machine breaks if no one maintains it.

By increasing tuition, the Regents are decreasing the number of educated people in our society, foreshadowing their own downfall.  If younger generations cannot afford to be educated, there will be few to perpetuate the machine, and many who will see to its demise.  But you knew all this, right?  The Powers That Be knew this was coming.  They knew that by increasing tuition, essentially privatizing education, they were supporting the creation of a more stratified society, separating the masses by those who could and could not afford to be educated.  And they knew that by limiting the numbers of those educated, they would send our society into a downward economic spiral, as if our economy could be dug any deeper into the hole it has hollowed out for itself now.  This was all foreseen, this came as no surprise, but a truth has been left out of the picture…one that affects even you. 

When all is said and done, who will take care of you when your money does not suffice?  When this generation takes over your jobs and the responsibility of your own geriatric welfare, will you sleep soundly at night?  Will you accept that we have no funds to take care of you?  You may think that that will never happen to you, but the mighty will fall to the karmic retribution of life. You will return to a state of infancy, unable to take care of yourselves, and no one will be there, because you have taught us to prioritize—and you will not be a priority.  A sad and grim truth, yet a product of your own doing, don’t you think?

We deserve answers.  We deserve respect, and we deserve to be a part of the solution.  Let us have a say, and we will find a way to work it out. A collaboration is needed; if you cannot see that, then the present and future is doomed.  It is as simple as that. Because if you are not willing to pay for your mistakes, then neither are we, and if the machine breaks, where will that leave you? 

Sincerely,

Leah Henderson
UC Santa Cruz

Can you afford this?
No.
How about you?
No.
And you?
No.
You?
No.
Y-
NO
Got it?

Our fees are increasing
Our numbers decreasing
Did you get your paycheck?
Mine read “zero” dollars
My bank account
can’t stop crying

I can’t pay for nothing
We got no library
We got no TAs
We got no teachers

“What do you got?” you ask
We got a 32% increase in fees
We got kids dropping out
We got angry protesters
We got a thirst
for education
that the Regents do nothing about

What’s the point
of going to school?
Joining a gang sounds fun
Might be more education too.