Musings
Here we sit, juniors and seniors in the University of California system, lounging and debating over the expansion planned for the campus in Santa Cruz. We all agree that the expansion is not in the students' best interests, that corporate sponsorship of public education is a recipe for disaster, that weapons manufacturers should not have the clout to increase enrollment, tuition, tear down forests, or build shiny new buildings within which to chop up helpless animals without anesthetic and sew them together again so that some forty-something year-old can get his hair to grow back or his erectile dysfunction to go away. And yet, here we sit and continue to sit. There is no action.
Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps, since it won't affect our lives directly on a grander scale, we do nothing because it doesn't worry us to the point where if we do nothing, negative things will affect us. The freshmen and future students will have to face this, but we won't. We will be able to look back on our experiences here in a completely positive light - we were able to coexist with Nature in the forests of Santa Cruz. Does that mean that other people should not have that same privilege? Despite my having long since graduated from elementary school, I feel a deep connection with the place where my formative years took place. I want to be able to proudly state that I am an alumnus of UC Santa Cruz, the diamond in the rough among the sea of capitalist interference with education, the "city upon a hill". I do not want to return to campus only to find that they have bulldozed the oak grove next to the library so they could build a few extra parking spaces.
The same applies to politics. People will grow old and have kids and grandkids. Shouldn't those yet unborn be given the same treatment you were accustomed to? Why are we destroying ourselves and the world in ways we never did before? Are we conscientiously bringing about the end of the world just so that we can say we were the last ones to enjoy it while it lasted? What is wrong with us? And yet we continue to vote to screw those who are in the same positions we found ourselves in not many years before.
I hear the science student interject. "I'm against the expansion, but I think the research is good." Sure, we all depend on a steady income to live our lives comfortably, outside of poverty with constant housing and food. Careers tend to be one of those nasty facts of life living in the capitalist system. And these kids are going to school to become doctors, scientists. They want to cure AIDS and bring an end to life-threatening cancer. But are they really going to be able to do that? Not while conglomerates with money on their minds continue to shove money at our institutions so that they can conduct "research" that will land them another wonder drug and millions, billions of dollars in revenue from people who would be much better off spending that money to eat healthy, spend time with their loved ones, or giving the money to someone else who truly needed it for basic human needs. Why is it that Lockheed Martin, the number one weapons manufacturer in the United States, is paying the UC to build a biomedical facility where trees now stand? Why can't they build it themselves? The free labor.
The poor students who want to change the world are developing weapons the likes of which we have never seen before. Rather than developing weapons to use to protect themselves, their families, and their rights from the oppressive government and its armed forces, these slave laborers actually PAY as opposed to BEING PAID to do this research. What is the purpose of cutting the head of a cat off and sewing it onto the neck of a dog, and how will it benefit humanity? There is no legitimate reason why we need to continue testing our pharmaceutical products on unwilling test subjects like the intelligent monkeys they will soon be chopping limbs off of only to sew them on backward and see if they retain their function.
Who is to say that a science student is more valuable to the community at large than a humanities student? Explain to me please why we need more researchers and fewer teachers. Suddenly we are so smart thanks to our Wikipedia and our Dictionary.com, we don't need to be told how to learn and why? Oh, just hand them these forceps and test tubes with unknown substances, it'll be fine.
This is the education we receive here at the University of California.
Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps, since it won't affect our lives directly on a grander scale, we do nothing because it doesn't worry us to the point where if we do nothing, negative things will affect us. The freshmen and future students will have to face this, but we won't. We will be able to look back on our experiences here in a completely positive light - we were able to coexist with Nature in the forests of Santa Cruz. Does that mean that other people should not have that same privilege? Despite my having long since graduated from elementary school, I feel a deep connection with the place where my formative years took place. I want to be able to proudly state that I am an alumnus of UC Santa Cruz, the diamond in the rough among the sea of capitalist interference with education, the "city upon a hill". I do not want to return to campus only to find that they have bulldozed the oak grove next to the library so they could build a few extra parking spaces.
The same applies to politics. People will grow old and have kids and grandkids. Shouldn't those yet unborn be given the same treatment you were accustomed to? Why are we destroying ourselves and the world in ways we never did before? Are we conscientiously bringing about the end of the world just so that we can say we were the last ones to enjoy it while it lasted? What is wrong with us? And yet we continue to vote to screw those who are in the same positions we found ourselves in not many years before.
I hear the science student interject. "I'm against the expansion, but I think the research is good." Sure, we all depend on a steady income to live our lives comfortably, outside of poverty with constant housing and food. Careers tend to be one of those nasty facts of life living in the capitalist system. And these kids are going to school to become doctors, scientists. They want to cure AIDS and bring an end to life-threatening cancer. But are they really going to be able to do that? Not while conglomerates with money on their minds continue to shove money at our institutions so that they can conduct "research" that will land them another wonder drug and millions, billions of dollars in revenue from people who would be much better off spending that money to eat healthy, spend time with their loved ones, or giving the money to someone else who truly needed it for basic human needs. Why is it that Lockheed Martin, the number one weapons manufacturer in the United States, is paying the UC to build a biomedical facility where trees now stand? Why can't they build it themselves? The free labor.
The poor students who want to change the world are developing weapons the likes of which we have never seen before. Rather than developing weapons to use to protect themselves, their families, and their rights from the oppressive government and its armed forces, these slave laborers actually PAY as opposed to BEING PAID to do this research. What is the purpose of cutting the head of a cat off and sewing it onto the neck of a dog, and how will it benefit humanity? There is no legitimate reason why we need to continue testing our pharmaceutical products on unwilling test subjects like the intelligent monkeys they will soon be chopping limbs off of only to sew them on backward and see if they retain their function.
Who is to say that a science student is more valuable to the community at large than a humanities student? Explain to me please why we need more researchers and fewer teachers. Suddenly we are so smart thanks to our Wikipedia and our Dictionary.com, we don't need to be told how to learn and why? Oh, just hand them these forceps and test tubes with unknown substances, it'll be fine.
This is the education we receive here at the University of California.