The California Aggie editorial: “Faculty Walkout: Students shouldn’t participate”
Sept. 24, 2009
Welcome back to school. Well, if you and your professors actually choose to attend class, that is.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 179 UC Davis faculty members are in support of today’s UC Faculty Walkout. A rally will take place on the quad at noon.
The walkout was organized by faculty members to protest the way UC is managing the budget crisis and its decision that faculty cannot take furlough days — required, unpaid days off — on assigned teaching days.
Fair enough. Not a bad reason for faculty to protest. What doesn’t make sense, though, is why over 1,000 students have come out in support of the walkout on the rally’s Facebook page.
It’s the students who are paying for this rally with their fees.
They’re the ones protesting the UC’s proposal to raise fees an additional 32 percent. The faculty, meanwhile, will be paid to rally.
UC Davis students pay an average of $35 per lecture, according to DavisWiki.org. That hardly seems like a good use of tuition money when your aim is to limit the cost of an education, seeing as the bulk of that educating does, in fact, occur in a classroom.
The faculty is to be blamed as well. Although staging a walkout on the first day of school will garner attention, the faculty knows students have paid to be educated on that day.
If faculty members felt the need to schedule a public protest, that’s fine. They should have done so on their own time, though, not on that of the students.
Last updated Sept. 24, 2009
