My question on tuition increases centers around the argument that minority or poor students will be adversely hurt by the tuition increase or the (admittedly asinine) complaint that UNC becoming the “university of elites,” not the “university of the people.”
We can ignore the issue with become elite (don’t we want to become academic high-achievers?). But given the Carolina Covenant program, tuition increases won’t impact the poor- it will affect those who are just above the 200% threshold; i.e., the middle class.
It seems to me that this is the proper critique of the proposed tuition increases- not the sadly predictable attempts at class warfare.
GREAT NEWS GUYS! We, as students will be paying so much less next year according to the associate provost and co-chairman of the student fee advisory committee, Dwayne Pinkney, and the Daily Tar Heel. We are saving $10.41 in student fees. Wait what? No, do not look over at the unprecedented 40% increase in tuition (almost $3000!) that in-state students could very well experience next year. And definitely do not look at the once-defeated sales tax (which aims to suck an additional $2.5 million out of the pockets of Orange County residents) that the Orange County Democrats are trying to sneak into “the books” with an off-year referendum.
Putting away the sarcasm and being overly fair to the DTH, they did cursorily mention the massive tuition increase in the closing sentences of the article (I might add that this mention came well off the front page, where all the praise for reduced fees was seen). The simple fact is, however, that the students of Chapel Hill are going to experience an increase in their expenses if either of these proposals is implemented.
The tuition increase would have the greatest effect on UNC students, so I will address it first. Carolina attracted one of the most competitive incoming freshman classes in recent history because we offered an amazing education at one of the best prices in the country at a time of great economic hardship. We can pontificate about the attractiveness of the “Carolina Way” or our first rate research facilities, which are both great, but if we are being honest, in an economy like ours, the primary attraction to this school for many prospective freshmen is its great value. If we were to adopt this tuition increase, we would necessarily reduce our competitive edge. Also, to those who argue that the cuts to higher education funding by the State House have inflicted an undue burden on Carolina academics and that this burden must be compensated for through other forms of income, I would point out that even if classroom funding were increased because of higher tuition, the educational experience of every student would be negatively impacted by the absence of intelligent students who could no longer enroll here because of the increased financial burden. Finally, with regard to tuition, I am not saying that there should be no tuition increase whatsoever. I am merely pointing out that a 40% increase (or 25% or 15% or 10% increases for that matter) is an extraordinary burden to expect a student population to bear, especially when our great value is what is attracting more students to us in the first place. There is usually a cap of a 6.5% increase in tuition each year, and any increase above that (which is about $455.52 this year) is too much.
Next, the sales tax would suck a projected $2.5 million out of the pockets of Orange County residents, and, even worse, it has already been defeated once before. In fact, the voters in Orange County have rejected multiple attempts to raise their taxes, but these have always been voted on in “big” election years, like 2008 or 2010, when voter turnout was expected to be high. Now, because the tax was mainly defeated by rural opposition in 2010, it has been re-proposed at a time when more conservative rural communities would not otherwise be voting while more liberal municipal communities would be going to vote for representatives for town governments. Even if you think that the county government should be increasing taxes on demand, (which doesn’t even make sense with Keynesian logic by the way) this tax needs to be defeated to send the message that Orange County residents do not appreciate being manipulated by their government. Finally, this tax would increase the financial burden on University students, albeit not as much as the tuition hikes would, and in a state that has been worse off than most during this recession, we should not allow for any government to make Chapel Hill a more difficult place to live for students who do not receive financial aid, parental, scholastic, or otherwise.
I’m not going to lie. Many Democrats have never found a government revenue source that they did not love; I have never found one that I did not loath. That said, the sales tax increase combined with the tuition increase will objectively increase the cost of being a Chapel Hill Student considerably. I don’t think anyone would argue that the net savings of $10.41 from student fees would make up for that massive increase, though the DTH might imply it.
Update:
The DTH had an article today (Friday, Nov. 4) about Student Body President Mary Cooper wanting to hear student input. I would urge anyone concerned about the tuition hikes to email her at macooper@live.unc.edu
Update #2:
I went to one of the tuition forums today and learned that the 40% figure reported by the DTH is unrealistic, and the impression that somehow tuition would rise that much in a year or two (which many people I have talked to got after their first time reading the article) does not seem to be on the table. You can text any questions you may have to 919-299-0195 and someone involved with giving the student perspective to the Board of Trustees will get back to you with an answer. Also, anyone interested, and in my opinion everyone should be, should attend a tuition forum. You can find all the times and locations here
An op-ed in today’s Washington Post contained some startling statistics:
Statistics show that as many as 78 percent of women will engage in a hook-up at some point during their college tenure, 14 percent of whom will rely on a friend to tell them what happened the next day, 49 percent of whom will never see the partner again, and 16 percent of whom felt pressured into the sexual encounter. In a given year, roughly 97,000 cases of college campus sexual assault or date rape related to binge drinking are reported. Another 100,000 college students annually report being too drunk to know if they consented to having sex.
It’s a sad product of the fact that, for years, manliness has been discredited in academia, so what’s wrong with men acting like boys?
The New York Times had a piece today about how the Occupy Wall Street movement was handling the homeless which was both unsurprising and sad. The first part of the article focused on how homeless people who are mentally unbalanced cause conflict in the movement, but the second part zeroes in on the inherent contradictions of OWS.
One homeless man is quoted as saying:
“If I need clothes, someone donates clothes,” he said. “If I need to take a shower, someone helps me find a place to do that. If I need medical help, there are medics here. Everyone gets fed well, 24/7. I need medical marijuana but I have no money. Here, people give it to me.”
His sentiments embody what OWS has become- “Where’s my bailout?” This gentleman has needs which OWS now fulfills. He doesn’t work for those benefits, he doesn’t even necessarily agree with the movement- they’re provided anyway.
OWS doesn’t see it that way. At the epicenter of it all, Zuccotti Park, OWS has created teams to deal with the homeless problem. Hero Vincent, a member of one of the teams, said OWS wasn’t here to be a recovery institution. The kitchen staff for Zuccotti Park recently went on strike because they were forced to serve the homeless.
Of course, helping the homeless should be a natural extension of OWS’s beliefs. Isn’t that what economic justice is all about? Instead, we see them reject the homeless because they aren’t contributing to the movement. Irony much?
Compare that to conservatism. Capitalism gives agency to private individuals to act- not only in economic terms, but in charity, too (which is why, for example, conservatives, on average, give far more to charity than liberals do). When people abdicate responsibility for helping others to abstractions like “society” or “government,” they are far less inclined to do it themselves.
Seen in that light, OWS isn’t being hypocritical, I suppose. While they claim to be concerned for the needs of the 99%, they don’t actually expect to fulfill those needs individually or even as a group, but simply want to demand government do it for them. Convenient.
As 2012 prepares to makes its debut, one event, one election, one day is on the minds of all UNC students: the 2012 Student Body President Race! With any luck, this year’s race will be just like last year’s, and the members of the Student Supreme Court will finally have the opportunity to earn that line on their resume. But for now, we are only left guessing about who will be on the ballot. Since Title VI of the Student Code (the bit that deals with election law) forbids potential candidates from declaring their candidacies until the Candidates’ Meeting with the Board of Elections in January, very few people outside the as-of-yet-unannounced campaigns know who’s actually running. Lucky for you, I’ve got people. From deep within the long and shadowy halls of student government, wired by encrypted cable, and delivered by a mounted horseman in a twice-sealed envelope comes this list of SBP candidates:
Elizabeth Merritt
Tim Longest
Will Leimenstoll
Calvin Lewis, Jr.
Leigh Fairley
Dakota Williams
Judging by the list, this year’s election should be a blast!
At the moment, the United Nations is considering a treaty which would force dentists to stop using silver fillings because of the presence of a small amount of mercury in that amalgam. Now, the cause of silver fillings is not one close to my heart (though I’d point out that with about 122 million Americans having these fillings, they can’t be that dangerous), but the fact that the UN thinks that it has the power to regulate domestic industry is truly concerning. I do not want bureaucrats at a local level (who may well be my neighbors and friends) telling dentists how to treat my teeth, so I certainly am disturbed when an international-level organization tries to impose a one-size-fits-all regulation like this on the world. The United Nations was intended to be a diplomatic forum for the prevention of World War III, not a global government. The fact that the US, NATO, the former Soviet Union, China, and other nation-states, or alliances of nation-states, have been the arbiters of peace and war for the past sixty years proves that the UN has utterly failed as a diplomatic entity. Now it feels threatened and sees the only way to justify its continued existence is to take up “feel-good” causes that should sometimes be in the control of local and national officials, or, more often, be controlled by the individual.
Whether or not it’s a “good idea” to have dentists switch to a different kind of filling should be left to the market. If it were ever to be proven dangerous, demand for these fillings would plummet and dentists would be forced to switch fillings. That is how it is supposed to work. An informed populace creates demand for certain products and the market takes care of the rest. When bureaucrats in government or international organizations issue top-down orders and mandates in place of market demands, they do more harm than good.
A perfect example of this is the UN’s humanitarian missions in poverty-stricken African nations, which may be plagued by tribal warlords and destructive civil infighting. Giving food to a starving populace in impoverished states is undoubtedly a “feel-good” cause. It also provides the implied argument for the continuation of the UN that without these missions everyone in these nations would starve. The problem is that, while the intentions are clearly noble, the effect is that the people now depend on the UN as a food source instead of looking to change their governments to allow for more prosperity and freedoms. Allowing more liberty would enable these nations to buy, raise, or grow their own food.
Now, before I’m called a heartless bastard who wants all African children to starve, listen to what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that there is no place for humanitarianism. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing to have people starving. And I’m not saying that the changes in government for the afflicted nations would be an easy process. What I am saying is that it is the place of private charities and churches to do humanitarian missions, not governments and international organizations, and I’m also saying that the only sustainable, long-term solution for countries that need humanitarian aid right now, is more freedom. Further, the only way to have a sustainable and free state in the long term is to have the people under the currently oppressive state’s control demand their freedoms. These freedoms cannot be handed to them or imposed on them by the UN or any other foreign entity if they are going to last. So, as difficult as it may be in the short term to see such hardship, it is not the place of the UN or of foreign governments to decide another nation’s fate; in fact, doing so hinders the native population’s motivation to improve their lot on their own.
One of my first blog posts was about the dangers in the Middle East and the likelihood that war could break out between Israel and her neighbors. I argued that this would be fundamentally different, and more dangerous, than previous wars that Israel has been involved in. Just to recap, I focused on the dangers of an Iran with growing nuclear potential and on Turkey’s break from the West, but I also mentioned that China would have a strategic interest in helping the Arab nations prolong such a war to increase its influence in the region, and decrease the influence of the United States.
Over the past week, there has been some movement on two of these fronts. Iran has heightened its feud with the more Western-friendly Saudis, and US-Chinese relations have been strained with passage of legislation that would allow punitive sanctions to be imposed on any country that manipulates the value of its currency, a move clearly aimed at the Chinese. Turkey has had no major activity in the region recently, except asking Iraq to crack down on Kurdish insurgents, so I will largely leave them out of this blog.
If you have not heard, members of the Iranian government allegedly sought to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. Even if the actions were not approved by President Ahmadinejad or the Ayatollah, such a bold and rash action is indicative of a regime high on its newfound status in the region. The Saudis have been the dominant military and economic power in the Islamic Middle East for decades, but the Iranians now can challenge them for hegemony. In terms of US interests and Israeli security, Saudi hegemony is imperative. The Saudis have never directly participated in the wars against Israel because of their economic ties to the pro-Israeli West, making their relative strength in the region of utmost importance to the US and Israel.
Contrastingly, the Iranians have had to turn to anti-Western nations, such as Russia and China for economic ties, since the West imposed economic sanctions on Iranian gas imports. They have no economic or political need to support peace with Israel; in fact, in order to please the religious fanatics that have strong factions within the Iranian government, a hegemonic Iran could very well call for “pushing Israel into the sea”, as it has in the past.
The escalating tensions with China are just as worrisome, however. After the Senate passed the sanctions on currency manipulators on Wednesday, talk of a trade war with China immediately arose. If this dispute were to escalate beyond the inevitable tit-for-tat punitive measures that they will try to impose on us, then it is very conceivable that they would take a more active role in escalating the situation in the Middle East. They know that we will feel the need to involve ourselves and that we will be sucked further into a prolonged conflict than we would like to be, so in the atmosphere of a trade war and strained relations with the US, the Chinese would be fools not to enflame unrest in the Middle East.
An alternative, and potentially more grave, scenario that could arise would be the Chinese trying to punish our protectionism by liquidating our debts to them in a manner that would tell other investors that the US is no longer considered a safe risk by her biggest foreign creditor. Even if this did not spark a bear market for American debt, it would significantly increase our interest rates and wound an economy that is barely limping along as it is. With such an economy, our influence in the Middle East would drop as quickly as our purchasing power, and we would be unable to effectively promote peace in the region, at which point the stability of the region would likely be determined by the victor of Saudi Arabia and Iran’s race for hegemony.
So, what course of action should we take to avoid such a scenario? Well, we must try to avoid a full blown trade war with China; we must try to inhibit Iran’s growing power in the region through diplomatic means; and we must make sure that if the worst case scenario does manifest, then Israel has the ability to adequately defend herself from invasion with as little aid from the US as possible. All these are good treatments for the symptoms of our illness, but the root cause is the irresponsible economic practices that we have domestically. If we had not run up a huge deficit, had it financed by unfriendly nation, prevented domestic oil drilling, or set up a system that rewarded the exportation of manufacturing jobs, then we would be in a much stronger situation today. The problems that we see today are all symptoms of a decade of irresponsible economic policies, but if we fix them in a truly capitalist fashion, then we will see the symptoms cured as well, in the long term.
The Occupy Chapel Hill “protest” that occurred Wednesday was not exactly a model of what the Occupy Wall Street movement is. In fact it seemed rather aimless, leaderless, and pointless, thus they were not really protesting anything in particular, just generally upset about a variety of issues. I went and interviewed multiple people at the protests, and all of them had different grievances ranging from UNC Chapel Hill spending cuts to a refusal on the part of the US to sign the Rome statute to there not being a guarantee of jobs after college.
One protestor accused President George W. Bush of “[giving] the green light for genocide to continue,” in Sudan. She also had grievances with the Obama administration for escalating the drone attacks in the Middle East and for not doing enough to stop human trafficking. Further, she was heavily critical of the US as a whole for not signing on to the Rome Statute, which would, “[force the US] to cede a portion of its sovereignty” to the International Criminal Court. Also, she blamed the Bush administration for not unilaterally acting in Sudan and the Clinton administration for not unilaterally acting in Rwanda, but she still did not support the Iraq War because it was not a multilateral humanitarian mission. Other grievances from protestors included cuts in funding to specific UNC programs, but no one had any plan to remedy these issues, especially in a recession. Also, there were those whose grievances were much closer to those of the Wall Street protestors. One girl talked about her concern about not having a guaranteed job after college.
While another protestor, who seemed to be one of the organizers, did say that the point of the event was to have an exchange of ideas on ways to solve these problems, and they even claimed to be open to conservative or libertarian solutions (though none were considered throughout the entire event from what I could tell and Carolina Reviews’ own Anthony Dent was blocked from their Facebook page). This however, directly contrasts the Occupy Wall Street protest in Manhattan, which is clearly liberal and progressive in nature. While the Occupy Wall Street protest does not have an official set of demands (there is an amusing and disturbing unofficial list posted on their website at the link below, however), the Wall Street protests seem to be focused almost exclusively on jobs and a frustration with the “super-rich” on Wall Street. Specifically, both protests seem to be upset about the corporate bailouts. This is a sentiment most capitalists can understand, but clearly the protestors are not upset about the bailouts for the same reasons that conservatives and libertarians may be upset about them. They seem to believe that the money should have been spent on workers or students.
Overall, the aimlessness of the Occupy Chapel Hill protests will likely be its doom. A movement without a purpose will not be able to last long. The one on Wall Street is particularly disturbing, however, because if the unofficial demands are even an indication of the overall sentiment, then the far left may be gearing up to try and start its own grass-roots movement to pull the Democrats to even more progressive policies (think Tea Party of the left). If you think Washington is polarized now, wait until movements like this get official demands and make Kucinich look mainstream.
Link to unofficial list of demands:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
Oh! And slightly related, weren’t these the same progressives who wanted a more “civil public discourse”. Now they are talking occupations… Just a thought.
We will have more coverage of the OccupyUNC movement (where privileged Carolina students come together and complain!) later, but a fun fact: The Facebook event for the group (http://t.co/af7UhKeQ) actually banned several people from the event altogether (including yours truly). We may or may not have been satirizing the whole premise of the group (we don’t have clear goals, but, by golly, we’ll protest!), but still. What ever happened to open-mindedness and tolerance, allegedly the core values of the Left? Dissent is patriotic, anyone?
Two publishing days after our beloved governor suggested that we should suspend elections, the ever-precient Daily Tar Heel has yet to have any substantive article about the comments. I will let you decide if she was joking at the link to the recording of her comments below, but I think we can all agree that they deserve more than a “thumbs down” and a letter to the editor. Do not worry UNC, I’m sure that your “unbiased” newspaper is all over this.
Link to audio:
