Lack of community

Last Thursday (I’m a little behind, I know) I attended a faculty, staff, and student rally against the fee increases and pay cuts the University of California system has adopted to battle its budget woes.

Freefalling tax revenues have forced the state legislator to disembowel the education system, and the Golden State’s public universities are being hit hard. As has been happening in Iowa since the late ‘90s, Sacramento has shifted more of the funding burden from the tax pool to students via increased tuition and fees. At the same time, UC officials are cutting fat and muscle to close the remaining budget gaps. Teaching positions are going unfilled, sports programs have been axed (like UCI rowing), and furloughs are being forced on staff. UC president Mark Yudof has said everyone will feel the pinch.

However, amidst all the fiscal chaos, the system’s administrators, chancellors, and regents have received pay increases. This was one of the focal points of the rally — that lower level employees are shouldering all the burden while the fat cats rake in more cash — along with the fact students are paying more but receiving less.

Similar rallies were planned at all other UC campuses, and organizers were hoping for a ‘60s-style walkout to disrupt university operations. They envisioned professors and students not showing up to classes, and staff walking away from their desks, bringing the entire system to a grinding halt. That was wishful thinking. Here at UCI, only a couple hundred attended the main rally at the flagpole in front of the administration building. The LAT reported that up to 5,000 demonstrated in Berkeley (no surprise), but a measly 20 showed in Merced.

I’m not sure what influence a rally like that can have, but I wanted to check it out and join nonetheless. In college I felt the squeeze of rising tuition, and am now experiencing the toll budget cuts take on university employees, so I am supportive of any effort to battle administrative greed and find alternatives to educational cuts and fee increases. The speakers included student leaders, union representatives, professors, and people who’ve endured a pay decrease (all staff) or layoff (I wasn’t aware people were being laid off). It was hot as hell and everyone was sweating through their shirts. Photogs circled the crowd for pics, a public radio reporter walked around with his backpack audio set, and the commies where handing out their newspaper. (I’ve seen them attach themselves like parasites to similar labor disputes in the past. We want to fight pay cuts, they want to completely alter the economic system. Whenever I see them I think of Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle.)

While I listened to the speakers and felt the reverberating echo of the crowd as they chanted rallying cries, I couldn’t help but see irony and hypocrisy. To me it felt like there is, on both sides of the issue, a lack of interest for the whole educational community.

Egoism. I first heard about it in a college philosophy class and have come to consider it a human (or American, at least) trait. The description, from my MacBook dictionary, is “an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality.” The dictionary’s extra information — a comparison to the similar, but different, term “egotism” — muddles the definition a bit, but my elementary understanding of egoism boils down to this: everything anyone does is for their own good and betterment, for their own happiness and satisfaction. I look at it as a type of self-preservation, and I saw it in action at the rally.

Looming over the rally area was UCI’s administrative tower, where the chancellor and high-ranking admins work to preserve and expand the compensations they receive. Down below, in view of the window offices, were the worker bees and fruits of the UC system, striving to protect pay, vacation/sick leave, and the quality of education. As the speakers droned on, I began to view the infighting at the UC as a battle between egoistic factions, between self-interests.

Of course I believe one interest is more noble and beneficial, and that greed and exploitation should be fought on all fronts. But in a climate and culture where everyone is looking out for themselves — campaigning to preserve their own quality of life — there can be no collective interest or understanding. Neither side will ever reason through problems without their own personal interests interfering, and they will never realize everyone will and has to be affected for the greater good of the community. In my opinion (excuse me for being a Libra, forever trying to balance the astrological scale) everyone needs to take their proportional share to resolve the problems. That is how it would be if the UC had, from top to bottom, a collective community acting in the best interests of the entire system. But no — you have educational CEOs shifting the burden to those below them, and the regular staff who want the admins and high earners to bare the brunt of the blow. Both sides need to work together and put their own interests aside.

But I don’t think that’s possible. The inequality and selfishness will continue, and nothing will change.