{"id":404945,"date":"2010-03-08T19:20:45","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011291835_cuttinghighereducation.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-08T19:20:45","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:20:45","slug":"cutting-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/404945","title":{"rendered":"Cutting higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>UW student strike disrupted classes, wasted time and money<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Editor, The Times:<\/p>\n<p>As a student at the University of Washington, I can certainly sympathize with my peers concerning the issue of education budget cuts [\u201cRallies target college funding,\u201d NWFriday, March 5]. I personally already have $15,000 in student-loan debt as a freshman and \u2014 naturally \u2014 the threat of a future increase is not appealing.<\/p>\n<p>However, I am writing in response to the student strike against budget cuts that took place last Thursday on the Seattle campus. With about a half-hour left in my psychology class, hundreds of angry protesters burst through the doors of the lecture hall with megaphones in hand and called for us to leave class. In my opinion, this was possibly the worst way protesters could have gone about sharing their message with the world.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the students\u2019 problem, it\u2019s Olympia\u2019s problem. Protesters preach they don\u2019t want greater financial hardship thrust into the hands of those who have no finances to begin with, yet they waste minutes of a lecture that people are paying to be in.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t like budget cuts either, but wasting our time and our money in the process ruins the argument. Things won\u2019t change with hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Melissa Roop, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Keep universities accessible and affordable<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Time and again, the students of Washington have been used as the state\u2019s \u201crainy-day\u201d fund. Rep. Deb Wallace understands that the only way Washington is going to grow is to have a well-educated population. The only way to ensure this is by keeping our public universities accessible and affordable.<\/p>\n<p>UW\u2019s Mark Emmert\u2019s $1.4 million salary is just one of the reasons why the UW \u2014 or any other institution \u2014 should not have the authority over tuition. Failures of institutions like the UW to ensure that students retain an affordable education supports the idea that they do not put the student\u2019s best interests in front of them. A public university is a public good and as Wallace puts it so well, \u201cIt\u2019s important that we keep ownership and accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over 50 percent of our students are first-generation and many are low-income. If House Bill 6562 becomes law, Eastern Washington University would be added in due time, making our most affordable institution available only to the wealthy.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Kris Byrum, ASEWU legislative affairs representative, Cheney<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UW student strike disrupted classes, wasted time and money Editor, The Times: As a student at the University of Washington, I can certainly sympathize with my peers concerning the issue of education budget cuts [\u201cRallies target college funding,\u201d NWFriday, March 5]. I personally already have $15,000 in student-loan debt as a freshman and \u2014 naturally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}