School Funds

(warning: rant)

I've been at Cal State Fullerton for four fall semesters now. Every winter, nearing finals week, I see the school setting up a ramp made of snow for sledding on, giving students a little winter's cheer before the stress of finals starts building up. This year is no different. I took this picture two days ago.

However, there is something different this year. Not about the slide, but about the school.

Having been diligently following my school-provided schedule for graduating in four years, I only need to take five more classes(one semester's worth) before I finish my requirements for graduation. This coming semester, two of those classes do not exist.

Not because "Oh, there were too many people adding the class and it filled up." I'm a senior, graduating. I get first registration priority. It's a "Where the fuck did the class go? It ain't on the course schedules!" Another victim of the PRK's self-destructive and uncontrollable spending habits.

I don't blame the Governator. Really. Well, maybe a little. But I think he's doing the best he can with the hand he was given. I blame all you liberals out there with your special interests and projects that all require money. You scream and argue about helping people and how greedy and self serving those who don't vote for your bills are,  yet you apparently can't balance a checkbook to save your life. Every time we pass one of your "Save the ****" or one of your "Promote Social *****" programs, it costs us money. Money we can't afford to spare, yet you make us spend. In California, we have state property tax, state income tax, state sales tax, state taxes on tobacco and gas, state retirement pension tax(taxes on our Social Security benefits), state inheritance tax...hell, we have every kind of tax out there. We also have the most ridiculously high corporate taxes. We pay more than 10%(average) of our personal income to the state taxes. Corporations pay so much that they have found that it is more affordable to MOVE their entire operations to another state and build new facilities there than it is to stay in California in their perfectly good current facilities. Which then, of course, lessens the overall tax pool, causing the state government to raise tax rates and acquire debt in order to make up the shortfall.

To cut it short, California collects more taxes than most countries. How the hell could you spend so much money that we're damn near BANKRUPT!? Now they have to raise tuition and cut classes at school throughout the state.

But let's concentrate on the point. The rising tuition isn't the point, as everything rises in cost. A coke was a nickle once upon a time, just as a liter of gas was. I already pay more taxes than I pay tuition. Honestly, a degree at a CSU is very cost effective. A semester as a full time student is now about $2500USD. That's 3-4 months of work at minimum wage. Chump change for a college graduate. I expect most CSU students can afford to have the tuition raised another 30% or so, despite all the whining about how expensive it is. What we can't afford is the cutting of classes. The situation is different at UC schools, where students pay on average twice as much as I do at Fullerton, but the point remains the same:

Cutting classes.

We already paid our money for our classes, now you tell us they aren't available? Where did all the money go?! Cut all the school activities and non-essentials you want, but keep the classes running. It's a loss, I understand, if we don't have sports teams and other school-funded activities, but it's an acceptable trade off to keep the most essential activities alive. We do go to school for SCHOOLING after all. If cutting all the non-essential student life activities out there today could allow the school to open even just 5 more classes, would it not be worth it? Especially to those students standing in the walkways desperately trying to add classes those first few days of school? Sure, I wouldn't have that hottie who says she's number 3 on the waiting list trying to seduce me into dropping a class, but that's beside the point(I didn't need that class anyway, it was only a filler).

Divert those goddamn school funds into schooling, or there's going to be a lot of pissed off super-seniors in the coming few years. I might even be one of them unless I change my concentration, since the classes I need to graduate DON'T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE!

Fuck your snow slide, give me my finance class back.