By Rafal Rogoza –
With a new elected crew of student leaders representing us on campus, the student body has a fresh start to asserting its’ interests.
The university has some serious obstacles to confront: shrinking enrollment, budget deficits, and bickering between the teachers’ union and administration. These issues have a direct effect on every student that attends this institution.
Students are caught in the middle of a labor dispute between the state and the teachers union. Often students side with one or the other, whether it be the union that is fighting for the best deal for its members or the state that is looking out for the taxpayers.
We ask of our student leaders to oversee essential student services such as the financing and operations of clubs and organizations on campus. With the current critical situation the university finds itself in, we need our new student leaders to do more and get tough.
Our student leaders have to be bold and push hard to address the student body’s concerns above all else. As students, we have to put our interests first, ahead of the union and state. Collectively we need to assert our expectations of the professionalism and management of our university, and our student leaders need to take the lead.
We need to be vocal whenever a student is forced to drop out of school because tuition is too expensive. We need to protect students whenever they are attacked by faculty and staff for standing up and whistleblowing about bad professors and university services. We need to demand transparency and access to every administrator and faculty member whenever a student approaches them with their concerns.
The union and state are fighting for what is best for them, we students need to fight for what’s rightfully ours because the fact is it’s our money that pumps life into this university.
Or, we could sit on our hands and let the administrators play with tablets and professors lounge on a beach when they’re on sabbatical. In the meantime, students grind out a full time work schedule in the hope that tuition won’t rise to the point of unaffordability.