UW graduate student walkout
News, School ·Sunday May 2, 2010 @ 18:49 EDT (link)
Some idiot socialist-leaning group ("For a Democratic University (FADU), an independent labor activist organization") is trying to muster up a graduate student strike tomorrow (May 3, 2010) because of tuition hikes necessary because of a state budget crunch (i.e., it's not really a hike, it's a lessening of the existing subsidies—reality is intruding into academia).
From an email I received (I don't know how they got my address, or the address of anyone at UW; mail came from "UW Grad Walkout <uw.grad.walkout@gmail.com>"): "FADU demands … Freeze tuition as a step towards free public education. No cuts to interdisciplinary programs such as Women's Studies, American Ethnic Studies, and Disability Studies. Build them up instead! Free quality childcare for UW employees." While we'd all like "free" stuff, TANSTAAFL. Either students need to pay the cost of their tuition, or teachers and administrators and utility bills don't get paid, or someone else has to be robbed to pay the cost. There is no magic money source; the entitlements they want come from the hard work of their neighbors in the real world.
Furthermore, these are graduate students that are proposing walking out. While they may have a little leverage in the hard sciences, in all areas there are more places than applicants, and graduate students are usually getting if not a complete free ride then subsidized tuition, housing, and TA appointments to help pay their way. Welfare recipients don't strike! For us not receiving benefits—which includes all of us here in the CS&E PMP (which "pays for itself" and maintains a separate cost center, which is the reason they gave for no longer allowing supervised research in the program), probably most out of state students (who pay higher tuition generally), we have no incentive to strike. The ones that are receiving the handouts have no moral basis to strike; they should be thankful for what the hard-working people of the state are already giving them. If they must stand and hold signs, those signs should display a profound gratitude to the taxpayers for their sinecures.
