Legislators need to step up
Here is the text of a message I recently sent to the California Senate Education Committee:
I saw a report today of your questioning of Chancellor Linda Katehi over the recent pepper-spray incident at UC Davis, and was taken aback. The state Legislature has, decade after decade, steadily de-funded higher education in the state of California, showing an embarrassing disregard for the students at our universities. You have abrogated the right to tell the university how to run itself.
We here at UC Davis also take this shameful incident very seriously, and are working hard to deal with its causes and consequences. To have legislators show up now to “care” about our students when their repeated funding decisions (not just recently) demonstrate otherwise is inappropriate.
Some of you may well be legislators who have fought to defend the University of California budget over the years, but until you succeed, please do not lecture us about “accountability.”
Truman P. Young
Davis
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=117177
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Posted by Letters to the Editor
on Dec 16 2011.
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Excellent letter!
That’s a very good point. One of the main points of the protest all along was increases in tuition, which is a problem caused by budget cuts from the state legislature. So indeed, any tears shed at this hearing would have been crocodile tears.