“There will not be a diminution of quality at the Amherst campus,” Billy Bob Bulger said. Famous last words? One can only hope.
Right now, there are a lot of angry people in the once happy World-o-UMass. Everybody’s bitching about something, bar none. And really, that makes a lot of sense – there IS a lot to be upset about. Our boy Billy couldn’t be more wrong about the quality of life on this campus declining, and he damn well knows it.
The music department lost half their staff. Escort services is in serious jeopardy of being eliminated. The security staff will most likely be reduced. Many classes in the fall will be gone. Much of the staff will be gone. Day-care is gone. The roll call goes on – at this point, all y’all with a pulse on this blessed campus know the nitty gritty.
What has irritated me so far about all of the budget cuts is the way that the student body has reacted to it. Don’t get me wrong – I hate the way that the rug has been pulled out from under us financially and educationally just like everyone else. It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: we’re getting the shaft. People need to be reasonable, though! Please?
Moan about stuff that makes sense, ok guys? Quit being dumb! You’re giving me a migraine! “Why doesn’t SOM just share their money for that addition with everyone else?” I’d like to smack my head every time I hear something like this. SOM’s money is SOM’s money because some dude named Isenberg (hence, Isenberg School of Management) donated it for the expressed purpose of building an addition for them. Why should UMass turn the money down because it has a specific project assigned to it? As a campus we should take the money where we can get it, for whatever we can get it for.
Budget cuts affect us all differently. Different things are going to tick each of us off. Escort service? I didn’t care. I’m a big enough guy, and I’m not afraid of walking around this place at night. I’ll never need that thing in my life, I reasoned. Waste of time and money for the University, I thought. It never occurred to me that someone might actually use the thing until the backlash hit and I spent an entire week sorting through letters to the editor at the Collegian written by individuals angry about losing the service. It obviously ticked someone off. It just wasn’t me.
Rumblings have it that at the very least, the foreign language requirement will be dropped soon due mostly to a lack of staffing in the departments. Does it personally affect me? Nope – I’d much rather take the nine credits of Spanish I would have been taking and take something else instead. If the language departments are revamped, though, someone’s going to upset, and they’ve got a legitimate reason to be. There will be people outside of a foreign language major who are going to want to get into those classes, and they’re most likely not going to be able to anymore.
The bottom line is we’re being selfish. That’s not unexpected – when people screw with our futures, we tend to take it personally. We tend to think of our own first. It also, however, doesn’t make it right. The UMass student body as a whole is getting screwed – each and every one of us is facing higher fees with fewer classes and services offered. We’re all losing out. All of us. Deal with it.
Crying in your beer and pointing fingers at other departments and places that lost less than yours are not going to help anything. It’s ok to be upset with the administration. It’s ok to be upset with the state government. It is NOT ok to be upset with fellow students in different majors who have no more control over the whole crappy process than we ourselves do.
The student body needs to band together instead of bickering among itself. Try to see where other groups on campus are coming from when they voice their concerns. They’re probably as important as your own. There shouldn’t be an “us” versus “them” mentality between different groups of students on this campus.
The cuts scare the bejeezus out of everyone here, because no one really knows what’s next to go except for good ol’ Billy and his buddies. We’ve all got that same dark cloud hanging over our heads – no student group or major is any different than another.
Things are going to suck around here for a while. Get used to it. Stick together, guys. It’ll be tough for UMass to make it through if we don’t.
Dan Lamothe is a Collegian Columnist.
