[You can see my head hunched over a typewriter in the lower left-hand corner].
I've always wanted to be in a rally, so scratch that one off the bucket list.
The Background: Recently, the Iowa Board of Regents proposed to once again raise tuition and grad student fees. Hijinks ensued.
Things weren't helped by university president Sally Mason, she of the perpetual foot in mouth (just last year, she said that aiming for zero campus rapes was probably unrealistic, given "human nature." That did not go over well). This year, when she was confronted by the complaint that the average Iowa student-debt load was sixth-highest in the country, she claimed student-debt was all just a matter of "lifestyle," what with the kids these days buying their laptops and iphones and so forth. That also did not go over so well.
This prompted a cheeky classmate of mine to make flyers reading things like: "Hey! I saved hundreds of dollars by trading in my laptop for a $5 typewriter! Sally Mason was right, I guess student debt really is just a matter of lifestyle!" or "I dropped my phone bill down to practically nothing by just training a carrier pigeon instead! Thanks Sally Mason!" Other folks also pointed out that adjusted for inflation, in 1972 (when Mason graduated) most public universities were far better funded, tuition far lower, and the minimum wage higher, than in 2014. You'd think a Science PhD like Mason would be better at math (but then, she was a biologist...that one's for you, David Harris!).
It's also a little gauche for a president who makes nearly half-million a year and lives in a paid-for mansion to critique working students.
Anyhoo, these things came to a head on Wednesday, when the grad-student Union held a rally on campus. All the standard tropes were there: the pre-made signs, the slogans, the rhyming chants, the speakers shouting into a megaphone--is it bad that I kept thinking about how this reminded me of every '60s-movie ever? Like, maybe we need to innovate new rally tropes so that they feel less like easily-ignorable background noise?
Not that it was all cliche--the organizers also set out a string of $5 typewriters for us to type on during the rally. I found that clever. I repeatedly typed "REPLACE ADMINISTRATION WITH ADJUNCTS" and "ADJUNCTIFY SALLY MASON" on mine.
And in any case, maybe these old tropes still work--next day, the Board of Regents voted to extend the tuition freeze. They didn't reference the rally, but then, hey, why would they?
What I found more interesting was how the rally-organizers explicitly connected tuition-spikes to global warming--the thinking was that college grads with massive debt will take any job they can get, including with the very industries that most pollute the Earth, and thus will be more likely to keep their heads low and not ask questions or protest in order to snag those desperately-needed jobs. The endless tuition-hikes, then, are part of a coordinated government/industry collusion to cow the larger populace into submission. A conspiracy theory perhaps--but then, just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you.
But today at least, the students won.
For now, anyways.
For there are still far larger institutional and cultural problems at play here, I've realized. Case in point, the next day I attended an award ceremony at the old capital building on campus. Renowned Marxist literary-scholar Frederic Jameson was given a prestigious award, which included a check for $30,000. Jameson was a fascinating speaker and a living legend, so I'm glad I went (especially since, at 80, he's not much longer for this world). But his words are not what have stuck with me since yesterday: rather, it was his introduction, which included a long catalog of all the many other prestigious cash awards he's gotten over the course of his career--including a recent one from the Kingdom of Norway for $750,000. Jameson also teaches at Duke, which means he pulls a six-figure salary at least.
In other words, this Marxist scholar is surely a millionaire--and, like all rich people, we reward his wealth by showering him with yet more wealth. We don't even give the money to some young and rising scholar or long-neglected writer who could surely use the encouragement and financial help, but instead to someone at the end of his career who already has more accolades and cash than he surely knows what to do with. I also couldn't help but note the low-wage caterers that weaved silently and unnoticed throughout the reception area.
We in the English discipline tend to celebrate our sophistication and critical eye, but there was a distinct lack of self-awareness last night, a failure to see the intense irony of showering money on a millionaire Marxist critic of all people, amidst ostentatious displays of institutional wealth.
It's easy to critique Sally Mason and the Board of Regents, you see--but when we fail to acknowledge our own complicity, things get stickier.
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