Posts by tpalkowski:
A door of opportunity
February 16th, 2010Editor’s Note: Many seniors at GBHS have written college application essays filled with passion and heart. The GBHS Gazette has asked fourteen college-bound seniors to share excerpts of their essay. After you have read all the excerpts, try to guess what senior wrote it.
A)The memories of the nightly fishing expeditions with my father and grandpa will always stick out in my mind…Whether it was over who could catch the first fish, the biggest fish, or the most fish, we always challenged one another. To this day, striving to get more from myself remains one of my greatest motivators; it pushes me to improve.
B) Unlike sports and classical dance forms where movement is controlled, breakdancing allows me to freely express myself because I’m bound by no rules. When I’m competing on stage, everything is happening at the moment, and I am empowered to make up moves as I go along while feeling the music. During performances, I feel like my limbs are Picasso’s paint brushes and the stage is my canvas.
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The cost of an education
November 16th, 2009 When school started at most University of California campuses in late September, it wasn’t the stereotypical peaceful beginning of the fall quarter.
Instead, across the UC system, there were protests over rising UC tuition and cutbacks in UC services.
“There were students, faculty, janitorial workers, yard maintenance and all these different groups of people who were angry for all different reasons,” GBHS graduate Stephanie Vatz said about the Sept. 24 protest at the University of California, Irvine.
“Everyone is so frustrated. There’s a lot of unnecessary tension, and money stresses a lot of us out. Our parents pay for the tuition, and they really feel the (financial) burden… Everyone is trying to cut down on things.”
Vatz is among many UC students who are beginning to see the economic effects of the California
budget crisis manifested in their public education. On Sept. 24, students from all seven UC campuses rallied against the reported rise in tuition.
Starting in January, all UC undergraduate students will pay a 32 percent increase in tuition. This means UC students will be paying $585 more per quarter for a public education. This plan has not been approved yet. The UC Regents will meet again this month to finalize the increase.
If it’s approved, “the total increases for the 2009-2010 (school year) will be $1,344, and that would bring undergraduate fees for California residents to about $10,302 (per year),” according to spokesman Ricardo Vazquez of the UC Office of the President.
The budget crisis, however, didn’t happen overnight.
Over the past two decades, the California state government has contributed 50 percent less to the UC system, Vazquez said.�
According to the 2009-10 Spending Plan from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the government has cut 20 percent from the UC budget since the 2007-08 school year.
In July, UC President Mark Yudof sent out a public letter, announcing The Regents’ decision to furlough all UC faculty members starting Sept. 1. “The Regents declared an extreme financial emergency for UC,” Yudof noted in his letter, making temporary salary cuts to faculty inevitable. �
“I make less money every month,” UCI Humanities professor Catherine Liu said. “My husband and I both work at the UCs, so we are both taking a seven percent pay cut.”
On Sept. 10, Yudof addressed the budget crisis, claiming that “the state has backed out” of its commitment to higher education and “has been an unreliable partner for 20 years.”
The proposed rise in fees will compensate for the lack of money being provided by the state government, but it will not cover the entire UC deficit.
“(The UCs experienced) devastating budget cuts in the last two years from the state, about a 20 percent reduction,” Vazquez said. “That’s just about $814 million over two years. We have had to look at everything and make a very difficult decision.”
Yudof said the UC will not “come out of this (budget crisis) easily,” anticipating an economic recovery in “a matter of years.”
For now, the UC has had to “face the hard reality” of a struggling economy. One thousand UC faculty members lost their jobs last year, and another 1,000 people will lose their jobs this year, Yudof said in a press conference.
“We are looking at permanent lay-offs in the School of Humanities,” Liu said, “up to 20 out of 85 staff members.” �
A major concern among UC students is not being able to enroll in classes they are planning on taking.
GBHS graduate and former Gazette co-editor-in-chief Paige Xu, a UC Berkeley freshman, said she is concerned about not getting into the classes she intends to take next semester. Because of over-enrollment and increasing class sizes, UC administrators are limiting the number of students per class.
Xu, who plans to become a science major, said she might not be able to enroll in an organic chemistry lab. Because students depend on a lottery system to sign up for classes, they must count on drawing low numbers.�
Xu unfortunately ended up with a high number, causing her to consider alternate options.
“Because of budget cuts, not everyone who is enrolled in lecture is going to be able to get enrolled in lab,” Xu said. “I wasn’t planning to take any courses over the summer, but if I don’t get into this lab, I have to take it over the summer. … If I don’t finish it by either next semester or this summer … and if I take it next year, I can’t take the bio classes that I need to take in order to stay on track and graduate in four years.”�
Xu also said that because UC can’t afford full-time graduate student instructors, physics labs are now only on Thursdays rather than Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Because of cutbacks, the UC Berkeley library is no longer open on Saturdays. And, according to GBHS graduate Brittany Nielsen, because of cuts in staffing hours for librarians, the libraries on the Berkeley campus that are open are cutting their hours the rest of the week.
“Your class size is bigger, and you have less personal attention,” Vatz said. “Last year, I had a TA who would be with us once a week, and this year, we didn’t have that.”
According to Vazquez, the UCs over-enrolled 14,000 students last year. This means the UCs admitted more students than they had resources for.
“For the last two years, we have not received funding for enrollment growth from the state,” Vazquez said. “In order to bring our enrollment more closely in line with our resources, The Regents last year decided to reduce … freshman enrollment to be more in line with our resources.”
Because of rising class sizes, Liu admits more students into her classes, because she knows that if she doesn’t, it will ultimately take students longer to graduate and thereby increase the cost of their education.
Liu said she thinks the University Commission on the Future, which is in charge of improving the UC system, has dealt with the budget crisis “in such a way that is very disorganized, very chaotic (and) very undemocratic.”
“(The budget crisis) is damaging to everyone at every single level,” Liu said. “Everyone who goes here is going to feel it. … The morale of the staff (is) very, very low, and in terms of faculty, we are struggling to do what we always do but with much less and much more pessimism. … The general feeling ranges from outrage to resignation.”
One of the hallmarks of a UC education is that it is very affordable. One of the major issues brought up during the protests was that a rise in fees would limit ethnic diversity.
“A lot of people were talking about minorities or people who are immigrating from other countries, about how you are taking away their right to an education, because they can no longer afford to go to (a UC),” Nielsen said.
While tuition fees will increase, the Blue and Gold Plan, which is the UCs financial aid program, will continue to pay the full tuition for those students whose parents make $60,000 or less. Recently, Yudof extended the requirements, allowing students whose parents make less than $70,000 to be eligible.
“Every time there has been a fee increase, the equivalent of 33 percent of any revenue generated by that fee increase is set aside for financial aide … to mitigate the impact of higher fees on low-income students,” Vazquez said.�
In spite of Yudof’s attempts to salvage the UC budget, he hasn’t quite been welcomed with open arms by students and faculty.
On Sept. 27, Vatz, who is a news editor and reporter for UCI’s newspaper, was at Yudof’s Big Man on Campus interview for the New York Times Magazine during which he said, “…being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening.”
This comment angered many students, including Vatz, who thought Yudof was being insensitive, resulting in mass protests.�
“The students are dressing up like zombies,” Vatz said, “like the dead rising up against Yudof.”
Photo special to the Gazette/LISA WANG
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