Activism at its finest

Let me start by saying that I'm usually a pretty peaceful person. Currently in the state of Tennessee, namely the Board of Regents system which runs many state universities including my own MTSU, we are going through a huge budget crisis. To make a long story very short, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents has written a memo to the state of Tennessee to "suggest" a few changes that could take place to reduce this budget crisis.

If you want to read the whole shebang, visit this link.

I will simplify the high points that the group I am joining are rallying against.

Some of Chancellor Mannings "ideas":

"Specifying in the curriculum that students must take a defined number of on-line courses in order to graduate at the baccalaureate and associate levels."

"Designing master's level degrees and work to be taken exclusively on-line."

"Establishing tuition differentials for lower division and upper division courses."

"Establishing tuition differentials for different majors."

"Eliminating or consolidating more programs."

"Reconceptualize faculty workload, moving away from defining it in terms of number of courses taught and toward defining it in terms of the number of students taught."

"Reduce academic work scholarship amounts so available funds can be distributed to more students."


If you didn't pick it out from reading any of these ideas, what Chancellor Manning is proposing is discrimination. Tuition differentials for lower/upper division courses means that those students who are struggling to make ends meet while in in lower division classes such as pre-requisite courses are going to find it that much harder to pay for school when their junior and senior years roll around. If students need a great reason to quit school, there it is laid out for them.
Tuition differentials for different academic majors is definitely discriminatory because it means that a Pre-Med student might have to pay more for school than an English major. If they choose to do this they wont have to worry about eliminating programs, because there will be no more students to participate in these programs. They will be choosing either other schools who do offer those programs for cheaper, or they will just choose an alternate career goal. Does this seem like a life-changing decision to anyone else other than me? Does it seem like we're forcing people to choose between their dreams and their pocketbooks?

I could rant on and on about this subject, which I fully intend to do in a more public manner in the upcoming days. I will be joining SOS (Save Our School), a non-partisan, pan-campus organization of people who would like the Board of Regents to know our stance on the issues. This does affect more than one school, so I hope to be able to spread the word to other Board of Regents schools also.

Have a wonderful activist weekend!