The University War Sagas: The Denial Dispatch

Our Flickr pool's Great Beyond gives us "Broken Obelisk at night"

The Governor's budget for 2011-13, combined with the already determined cuts in spending for this year are a like an unfortunate announcement from the bridge of our collective ship of Washington state: 

Ladies and gentlemen, we are taking on water, and in order to survive, some passengers need to be thrown overboard. The good news is that first class and corporate passengers are exempt. Those passengers are welcome to visit our new and improved buffet and to enjoy dancing well into the night.

This announcement also bears a striking resemblance to the weak-kneed announcement regarding the tax "deal" issued this week by the president, now living as a hostage in the White House to cynicism and greed. Just like the middle and lower classes of America. 

Here at the University of Washington, this announcement was both expected and anticipated. We've been watching the water rise for a few years now. What this dispatch addresses are the various reactions across campus to the announcement.

• A dean, in an effort to sooth anxiety, sent out an email that said we should go into the holiday break in denial and just enjoy ourselves.
• The interim president, in an article in the Tacoma News Tribune  this week, naively insisted that the necessity to accept "alternative funding" (read: corporatization/privatization) would never change the identity and mission of the UW. 
• The faculty senate continues to meet, consternate, debate, proclaim, and declare in the cold ocean of irrelevance, since the idea of shared governance at UW is nothing more than a condescending platitude.
• Units and departments frantically rearrange deck chairs, even as the deck chairs themselves are becoming scarce.
• Students who face double digit increases in tuition, larger classes and reduced course offerings continue to Facebook and YouTube their lives away in blissful apathy, gently rocked by the waves of inevitability.

Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that after a careful examination of the prose preambles in the Governor’s budget, I could not find a single reference to our institutions of higher learning that spoke of the need for colleges and universities to exist in order impart knowledge. There were, instead, references to higher learning in Washington state as "economic engines" and "job skills preparation facilities." 

Noble and necessary as these roles are, the absence of any narrative that speaks to the need to educate intelligent citizens with some basic critical thinking ability underscores the thesis I set out in my first dispatch from the University War Sagas: The iceberg in the dark ahead of us has a sign on it that reads, "Welcome to the (insert corporate logo of highest bidder here) Washington State Vocational School of Consumer-Workers, formerly known as the University of Washington."

Right now I'm going to try and sneak into the buffet. More dispatches to come….