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HEARING ON
TUITION INCREASES
CITY COUNCIL / COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
JANUARY 31, 2003
Thank you Councilman, and the
Higher-Ed Committee, for continuing to support us.
My name is Dennis sinneD, and I am nothing more than a mere student
who appears before you today to echo and represent the tens of
thousands of students, their tens of thousands of parents and
guardians, and their millions of peers who are oftentimes dismissed
as "mere" by the so-called powers-that-be. Miriam and
Charlie from
NYPIRG did an excellent job of giving us the numbers, so I'll
comment
on another facet of our unified message, the part that is human, and
humane. This message is directed specifically to those of you who
have some ambivalence and doubt about what position to take on the
Governor's budget proposals.
The memory of "the mere" is long and has high fidelity.
Anyone who
sides with Pataki's proposal, I pledge and guarantee, we pledge and
guarantee, will succeed in undoing his or her political career, if
not his or her intellect and conscience. This proposal has been
submitted and propelled by irrational simpletons under the guise of
political solidarity. It is an absurd unity that needs the courage
of
separation, partisanship and deconstruction. Pataki is once again
playing the role of bumbling surgeon, stitching together gaping
wounds in the budget with cobweb threads, when he has the steel and
elasticity of the students to do it for him. The Old Guard will not
lead society out of this current darkness. How can they, when they
themselves have been struck blind by the darkness they have
perpetrated? If the light bulb blows out, you replace it with a new
light bulb. You don't take a bowl of glass and put an old charred
fuse in it, and call it a "new" light bulb. In a society
where
innovation is crucial, not just to the furtherance but also the
maintenance of that society, to handcuff the bringers of light,
the "mere student," is more than stupid, it is a betrayal
and an
abomination to that society. Taking education away from the student
is like confiscating the tools from the craftsmen and craftswomen
who
fashion the light bulb. This fine if you want to live in the dark,
huddled together in fear and ignorance, but me personally, I have
always preferred Renaissance to Dark Age.
Likewise, Pataki is using bleakly grey cobweb threads to perform
this
vivisection of society, but he calls them "off-white," and
I intend
every pun. He is playing at semantics to deceive us all,
substituting
a three letter dirty word, T-A-X, for a politically innocuous
phrase, "tuition hike." Isn't it interesting that only the
students
seem to have the faculty to see through this transparent duplicity?
This "tuition hike/TAP cut" is nothing more than a
political anagram
for "tax hike." But the education that the governor
attempts to
stifle is the one that we will spill out onto the streets, and our
slogan will be "Pataki is a liar," and we will chant it
like mantra.
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