Despite the recent protests at Pierce College, in Sacramento and across the state, cuts in the education budget will still go through.
The best case scenario for California community colleges is to lose approximately $400 million, or a little more than five percent of its operating budget in the coming 2011-12 school year.
The worst case scenario calls for a 15 percent cut across the board as well as a fee increase which will force out thousands of community college students.
Our voices are not being heard.
Politicians in Sacramento and indeed anywhere in America would never dream of cutting Social Security because they know they would be voted directly out of office.
The students, the faculty and the administrators of the California community colleges need to become as adamant as our elders, we all need to pull together as an educational collective and fight the budget cuts.
Students, faculty, staff, administrators all have something to lose.
We should be a force to be reckoned with, not a mob to be ignored.
The recent protest and march down Victory Boulevard at Pierce College has shown that students and staff can work together to accomplish great things.
Let’s do it again.
The time has come to pull together to fight for our well being. If we don’t, no one else will.
If the politicians in Sacramento won’t listen to us, then we must force them to.
The people in Egypt overthrew their government in 17 days because they didn’t stop after day one.
Take to the streets. Write your representatives. But most of all we must express ourselves peacefully.
If we are willing to sit idly by while our schools are taken from us, then that is exactly what will happen.
Students in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East protest when they are upset. They don’t sit idly by in their classrooms bemoaning their fate.
They take action.
The protests here at home must continue. We must paralyze the system until it cannot operate. Then, and only then will we be taken seriously.
We must take action consistently until the cuts in education are removed from the budget.
We cannot treat these protests like a school assignment, do it once, turn it in and forget about it.
If we forget, how can we expect others to remember?
If we don’t feel our cause is one worth fighting for, then no one else will either.
Politicians listen to the elderly because they vote; plain and simple. We must also make our voice heard.
We are about to lose something rare and precious. Nowhere else in America, except California, can an average citizen attend a community college so inexpensively.
This has enabled the poor and middle class to return to school whenever they need retraining. It has also given graduating high school seniors another option to attending a high priced university.
Make your voice known!
Be heard!
