The Seattle Times reports on yesterday's UW student protest over budget cuts.
Concerned about their threatened "right" to a more (as opposed to slightly less) generously subsidized college education, the students shortchanged their own educations by cutting afternoon classes. Some faculty and staff joined in:
Holly Barker, an anthropology lecturer, said she let out her afternoon class early Thursday so that she could join the protest.That class being "Linguistic Ethnography", described in the catalog as "The Discourse of Climate Change", where students would "Understand how a variety of social actors construct messages about climate change".
I'll leave it to others to judge how high of a priority this particular course should have relative to other courses competing for scarce resources. One thing we do know: The instructor herself feels that the class is sufficiently unimportant that it's a better use of her students' time to go outside and block traffic.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 05, 2010 12:34 PM | Email ThisIn the meantime, I wish I had signed up for said class...one that I paid for with my own money that I earned in second hand jobs...the kind that got me through college. (And two graduate degrees) I'd sue for breach of contract. If I'm in the seat, I expect the instructor to be there. Posted by: Diogenes on March 5, 2010 12:45 PM
I dont get it. Why do they want classes like these?
Hey I have an idea, how about taking a class that can actualy help you get a job. Like um, oh gosh, maybe computer science or perhaps nursing.
Gotta love the entitlement generation...
Linguistic Ethnography... really?.... wow...
Posted by: webb on March 5, 2010 01:18 PMTruly the best and brightest in this photo!
Posted by: asdf on March 5, 2010 01:41 PMA 4-year college education in "nursing" or "computer science" isn't four straight years of just programming vocational school or nursing trade school, either. Something as a class which seems obscure to people not in the field can be of amazing relevance to those within it.
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 5, 2010 02:18 PMYou "Wal-Mart Hippies" have more in common with them than you care to admit. See David Brooks' column today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html?ref=opinion
Posted by: LaborGoon on March 5, 2010 02:18 PM
Better headline- Young Democrat voters do the "walk of shame." The term when a college girl has sex with a really big jerk and realizes the next day what a mistake it was.
All of these young voters were sweet talked by "education" democrats for the past 20 years and are now realizing there is no delivery on promises made in the heat of electoral passion-except to union cronies.
I bet none of the protesters have a clue that for their entire lifetime in "under funded" education (8 years of Locke and 6 years of Gregoire) we've had Democrat Governors who used education as THE issue to beat up Republican's.
But instead of fixing education, they've run it into the ground and frittered away our money on pet projects, like making several of the spokane schools "green" and climate change friendly- a project which caused the power bill to rise by 20% compared to the old building.
Do these protesters feel stupid? They ought to, because they sure look like it.
So? That means we should pay for THAT class just because they have a decent MAJOR? That makes no sense. Try harder.
Goon: Now that you teabaggers are protesters too
Yes, but there's a difference. We protest to keep what we've worked for. They protest to take what we've worked for.
I know this difference is missed by many, but it SHOULD be obvious. These kids aren't America-haters, most of them. But they are very greedy and very selfish.
As to David Brooks, his irrational hatred of the Tea Party movement is no secret, and what he has to say about is, per usual, uninteresting. An example of his blindness: he implies that by purchasing Saul Alinsky's book, conservatives are using his tactics, when it is more likely that they are buying his book to COUNTER his tactics.
But briefly, this is really all you need to know about Brooks on the Tea Party, when he says, "In its short life, the Tea Party movement has developed a dizzying array of conspiracy theories involving the Fed, the F.B.I., the big banks and corporations and black helicopters." The problem is, of course, that not a single one of those theories is representative of the Tea Parties, and every single one predates the Tea Parties.
Of course SOME people in and out of the Tea Parties have those views. That's what happens in a nation of 300 million people. But he picks the outliers and pretends they are representative.
Brooks makes the insipid claim that "Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures." Quite the opposite: the Tea Party is built on, in part, the conservative philosophy that man is NOT inherently virtuous. He's got it almost completely backward ("almost" because he is right that the Tea Party believes that authority structures are corrupt and rotten, but that's only because they are human, just like the members of Tea Party are).
In other words: David Brooks has spent way too much time in New York and he really has no clue what he's talking about. He believes the leftwing caricature of the Tea Parties instead of looking at what it actually is.
Frankly, I think this is all about Brooks hating Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. He picks their worst qualities, amplifies them, projects them as prime characteristics onto the people who watch them, and decries the mass movement that exists only in his mind.
I guess I can't blame him ... he is one of those pitiful human specimens known as "newspaper columnists." For such people -- if they can be called such -- everything has to fit neatly into a little box they can create a narrative for, whether it reflects reality or not. This is especially and unfortunately true of New York Times columnists (Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman being the two most-guilty parties).
To bring it back to protesting, it reminds me of Bob Dylan's days around the protest circuit. Everyone wanted to put him, and everyone else, into a little box. We still do it today: innumerable commentators still put Dylan into the Brooks' "New Left" box. But he wasn't. He was just a guy who agreed with some of what was being said, and was speaking out about it.
Movements define themselves, and people within those movements define themselves.
Unless, of course, we have newspaper columnists to do it for us.
The UW has the chutzpah to pay department administrators (not the Chairman, not the Dean, not the regents, not faculty) quarter million dollar per year salaries yet cry for more money from the state taxpayers. Most of the people I knew of who made that kind of money at the UW were School of Medicine faculty. If you're a physician at a teaching hospital I suppose you may make a case for paying them that kind of money for retention. I don't see how you can do that for administrators and then look at the people of this state with a straight face and beg for more money.
The leftist students have the nerve to gain a heavily subsidized university education from the working people of Washingon State (many of whom do not have college educations yet manage to get by and pay taxes) yet during the Obama depression they can only scream and stomp their feet for more money from those same taxpayers as if they were entitled to it.
Tea Party protestors don't riot, assault police, vandalize businesses or intentionally disrupt traffic and commerce. Liberal dirtbags do.
The overwhelming majority hold American flags with pride. We don't wear kheffiyehs in solidarity with the PLO, HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH ad nauseum like the dipstick in Pudge's accompanying photograph.
We're the people that are 27 years old putting 14% of our paycheck into 401ks instead of relying on the government or union strongarmed pensions to take care us when we get old and yet you all have the balls to call us 'entitled.' *rolleyes*
Go put on a Janis Joplin record and think about the times when you were a'changin' the world, quit yer bitchen, and let us get back to work moving this country away from manufacturing (which you poisoned) into emerging technologies.
Posted by: Anc on March 5, 2010 08:23 PMWith that said, I also agree with the sentiments of #14.
Posted by: KDS on March 5, 2010 09:08 PMIt's time for these "liberal" "socially conscious" kids to STOP THINKING ABOUT THEMSELVES and start thinking about the people that subsidize their education. More than 50% of the people of Washington, people who pay taxes that fund these kids' educations, have never been to a state college, will never go to college, and will have kids that probably won't be able to go to college. I think these spoiled kids protesting cuts should just shut up, say thank you to the tax payers of Washington who will never have the opportunity to go to college, and PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE.
I doubt it will happen since the "me" generation raised another generation of selfish, shallow, and arrogant kids.
Posted by: Thomas B. on March 6, 2010 07:34 AMbut--once you start blocking our streets, sidewalks, other peoples' movements & our driving along with
damaging others' properties in a tantrum, then it's time for a cooking class---
...we will add generous parts pepper spray to your pot and stir with nightsticks.
every good arse-kicking I've seen, given or received in life always taught me a valuable lesson...there are boundaries...and learn your place...
Posted by: jimmie howya-doin on March 6, 2010 08:15 AMI'm glad you're upset about the generational theft happening! As a "tweener" between the baby boomers and Gen X, I get the dubious pleasure of paying those higher taxes most of my life but having the late retirement age of a Gen Xer.
So what will you do about it? Rather than marching and skipping valuable class time (if we assume $10,000 for tuition, and 15 credit hours a quarter, each hour of class time is $22), how about supporting politicians who want to reform Social Security and Medicare? How about supporting politicians who want to allow privatization - and in fact, voluntary withdrawal - of these programs that are bankrupting the nation?
Funny, I bet you weren't marching in support of President Bush's plan to reform Social Security; probably marching to protest it, right?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 6, 2010 09:00 AMIt is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. And most analysts now see generations as getting shorter (usually 10-15 years now), partly because of the acceleration of culture. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
Posted by: pudge on March 6, 2010 10:34 AM
Others, will get out in to the workforce, find some businessperson who shows them real ingenuity, leadership, integrity and independence, and they will want to make a buck, the old fashioned way. And then they will look at how hard it is to start a business with all of the taxes, regulations and hoops that WA puts one through. The difficulty in convincing bankers and VCs that you have a real product worth investing towards, etc.
But now, they are just kids. Easily preyed upon by their Democrat handlers.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 6, 2010 11:21 AMI'll tell you why... because they don't realize what a great deal they are getting at public universities and colleges, which are subsidized by tax payers. These kids should pay their fair share. Increase tuition by 50%. That would be closer to reality than the extremely low tuition they are paying now.
Posted by: Thomas B. on March 6, 2010 11:30 AMÂ
I personally would have liked to ask the protesters how much money they would earn without a college education, and how much with. I would ask if that big difference wasn't worth them paying more for the education that is going to benefit them finically. And of course remind them that thinking about making "more" money is the first step of being greedy. Posted by: Marvin_Stamn on March 6, 2010 01:49 PM
Posted by: pudge on March 6, 2010 06:51 PM
And I already work to get people elected that will actually push through reform, I've voted Libertarian in every election since I was able to vote. Not to mention I vote with my dollar every paycheck (thank you CFC!).
As to marching, again, sorry but your assumptions are wrong again, the only marching I did during President Bush's Presidency was with 1st PLT, C Co, 1/23 INF, 3-2 SBCT, although being Stryker's thankfully we didn't have to march that much (except for that month in Spring 07 when 10th Mtn lost those two dudes, so they sent us down from Baghdad to find them, unfortunately 10th Mtn didn't know what to do with Strykers so we had to park them and just were Light Infantry marching around the fields and swamps around Yusifeyeh... that sucked).
So in otherwords, stick to the fucking topic at hand.
Posted by: Anc on March 7, 2010 06:13 PMWhy do young people believe you should get free - or highly subsidized - education simply by virtue of existing? You have something about that, or just going to rant about old folks once again?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 7, 2010 08:35 PMAs to the original topic, HOLD THE PRESSES!!! College students protesting, OMG! Seriously, what IS there to say on the subject?
Posted by: Anc on March 8, 2010 04:46 PMLet me try this again: you want to stick to the topic at hand, then why did you bring up SS and medicare? I don't see either in post 2.
So you do believe you should get free - or highly subsidized - education simply by virtue of existing?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 8, 2010 06:17 PMAs to the original topic, HOLD THE PRESSES!!! College students protesting, OMG! Seriously, what IS there to say on the subject?
Posted by: Anc on March 8, 2010 06:42 PM