blastedgoat

This is a comment I received on a message I sent the University of Northern Iowa where I am currently a student and employee. My original message was about the declining quality of the education at UNI and my personal dissatisfaction with a proposed $100 surcharge for the spring semester (after financial aid has been established potentially causing the extra fee to come out of student’s living, food or transportation budgets with only a few months warning). Feel free to react to anything, I do not discourage people who disagree with me as long as they bring up valid points. I have considered the following and don’t really see eye to eye with the author.

Keeping that in mind, I invite you to read my response to this gentleman named Mark: Our student tuition is still lower than all the other regent universities in Iowa. UNI has an excellent educational program for the amount we are lucky to pay. $100 surcharge is quite small and I was actually shocked to hear they weren’t going to increase tuition by $500 or even $1000. UNI receives less private and federal money than the other two regent universities, and so cuts like these place an added burden on our institution.

I was part of a student committee that proposed to create differential tuition for the College of Business. Our financial burden is substantially larger than any other program on campus because of the prevailing wage of business teachers in America. We raised our department’s tuition because we need the money to keep quality professors and programs. We believed that our education is so excellent, that we would more than re-coop that money after graduation. Our Business college is just as good as Iowa’s, and thousands less.

MY RESPONSE: Well I’m glad that you are happy with an education that teaches you to take more from people than you give, honestly you would have to be a business major to be willing to pay more for less and less every year just to see your major or minor cut even with annually increasing tuition and fees. I’m not in college to make money, I’m here to learn and that makes a big difference. If UNI wants to become a business/education institutions for fuck-ups and retards that are willing to pay $7000 for increased class sizes, pay freezes for student employees just so they be handed an overpriced piece of paper, the only reason they went to college in the first place. That piece of paper that they will put in their office filled with overpriced shit they don’t need because they have been taught by their so-called professors that possessions, money and consuming are the only markers of success. WAKE UP ASSHOLES they are fucking you all over! We all go to college, we all try to make our lives work with jobs that aren’t even gratifying, at least for me.

I read that the business school’s surcharge might be quite a bit more than the $100 the rest of us are looking at and for one am so glad because at least it will affect a jerk like you who is so blinded by greed and consumerism that you let overpaid pricks to teach you one giant pile of manipulative bullshit, you the chosen major, the all-capitalistic BUSINESS MAJOR.

This is coming from someone who picked the most useless major in the eyes of many but it takes that kind of person to stand up and say THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT, I KNOW BECAUSE I MAJORED IN IT, and so did you my friend, only you were too stupid to believe it was all based on a system that is running itself into the ground. AND I’M GLAD IT IS. FUCK those people in first grade who told me I could do anything as long as I worked hard and went to college, FUCK THEM ALL.

But before I am accused of not being objective let’s remember that this is my personal blog where I place my personal writing and as a student and employee of the university I have every right to speak out against acts I find outrageous and inappropriate no matter who might be performing the acts or who they benefit and so on. I would like to address your last remarks carefully:

“Education is privilege, not a right. There is no entitlement to a college degree and if you want one, then you must be willing to pay the price. One last note: UNI is not a community college, and therefore can command a higher tuition price because of its quality. If you truly believe that UNI isn’t worth the money or effort, than you should transfer to HCC or drop out altogether.”

Education should be a right in a nation that promotes freedom and equality. Every year students are forced to pay more for less while they are sent credit card offers, approved for loans sometimes without proof of employment or ability to repay and are lectured vaguely of the dangers of debt. Our whole society is based around debt, everything in our society is bought on borrowed money and we are just beginning to pay back the interest. You can’t win because the odds are stacked against you, America is one big greedy casino with one winner, the house. They give us the flashing lights of the media and political arena to distract most of us and the rest the appease with idol entertainment. Most people myself included cannot quote the Constitution, a staggering number can’t tell you the difference between that document and the Declaration of Independence and an alarming number don’t care about what I’m saying in the least or worse, they can’t even understand what I’m talking about. And as I said before, I am a GROSS PRODUCT of the crumbling education system. Three out of the six buildings I attended elementary and secondary school in are condemned and my current university is going to plow a large part of its history in favor of parking spaces and modern dorms to attract yet more unwitting victims.

Higher education is a predator that feasts on the minds, spirits, and credit of young people who were raised by conservative Christian parents. FUCK YOU CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN PARENTS (and their idiot offspring) you are running the world into hell because you believe that’s what’s supposed to happen.

My only solace is that in a few years none of this will matter at all because America as we know it will be destroyed. It won’t come from the outside but we will crumble from within once enough people lose their homes, are forced into debt by sickness or education and finally realize that something needs to be done. That something needs to change.

As a person who is motivated to learn I should be given the opportunity to pursue an education I desire just as you should but I think LIBERAL ARTS focused schools should focus on the liberal arts and not get rid of a beautiful lake to build one of the ugliest buildings on campus or continue to tear down old historical buildings in favor of cheesy, tasteless bullshit that we pay for in money and in inconvenience not to mention the eyesore.

I pay money to go to college therefore I should get a say in where my fucking money goes. I want teachers, classes and access to information and technology, everything else (the student union, modern dorms, televisions in lounge areas, parking ramps, student organizations including sports) are extra. UNI is not a community college, it is a BUSINESS, it takes in more students than it can handle, mismanages its funds, previously has increased salaries for certain persons in the midst of ongoing budge struggles and shortcomings. We pay more every year and we see professors and classes disappear and yet you maintain the school’s and the nation’s propaganda that public schools are effective and of high quality?

I’ve got news for you, you’ve been well trained in bullshit, congratulations my friend, we’ve reached the end of the rainbow when it concerns the ever-elusive American dream. Guess what? They lied about that, too.