Riddle me this.
You’re a UC regent, and you’re scheduled to vote on whether to increase student fees by $662 per year next week. You’re slated to make this decision at a public meeting held at UCSD, where you expect to encounter students who have seen fees continually rise since they were freshmen. Simultaneously, a mild form of the flu breaks out in San Diego, eliciting panic throughout much of the community.
What do you do?
If you were anything like the real regents, you’d release a statement in which you discreetly cancel your visit and use swine flu as a cop-out.
In complete disregard for the students who have been looking forward to their visit for months, the university’s higher-ups did just that last Friday afternoon.
Today, instead of facing a long line of cash-strapped students demanding a more affordable education, the UC Board of Regents will be voting on a 9.3 percent increase in student fees for the 2009-10 academic year ‘mdash; over the phone.
It’s doubtful the regents canceled their campus visit because they were genuinely worried they would ‘divert the attention or resources’ our campus needs to combat the hardly lethal swine flu. There have been no recorded cases of the disease at UCSD, which’ ‘mdash; reassured by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s incessant e-mails ‘mdash; means we don’t really have anything to worry about. Even if, say, 2,000 Tritons contracted the disease overnight, those responsible for orchestrating the meeting wouldn’t be tasked with tending to runny-nosed students.
The UC regents were well aware they were going vote to raise student fees today, like they do almost every year, and used the pandemic as a scapepig.
Because more important than a disease-free meeting is one without mobs of angry students and negative media attention. By voting via teleconference, the regents are ducking unpleasant obstacles in the way of raising student fees during a difficult recession.
Perhaps even more cowardly, the board scheduled the conference one week after the deadline for admits to submit their intent to register.
It’s nothing more than a vicious corporate tactic, considering an extra $662 in student fees is enough for any middle-class family to choose community college or a less expensive California State University campus over a UC campus.
The board, in essence, got exactly what it wanted: Incoming students chose their preferred campus without all the financial facts, and a student-organized rally against this fee increase meeting ‘mdash; scheduled to take place at UCSD ‘mdash; was canceled.
It’s common courtesy to let’ prospective students know exactly how much they’re expected to pay for their education, and existing students should be offered more than a 20-minute over-the-phone courtesy Q-and-A when a nearly 10 percent fee increase is at stake. Until the regents start showing us some respect, we can only expect these strategic moves to become semi-permanent side acts to their annual fee-hike routine.
The regents have proven to be masterminds at finding ways to avoid the public hot seat and ignore students; it’s about time they channel that energy into creating a more sustainable financial plan for the UC system. Maybe a genuine conversation between students and regents might result in a little less fee increasing and a little more progress.
But if they refuse to give us anything more than 20 minutes of phone time, they should at least have the decency to tell us they don’t care in person.