ASPSU’s recent rally in the park blocks was just the latest demonstration of how far your student government has strayed from making any kind of real impact for the students of Portland State.
The rhetoric of this rally was focused on keeping tuition low and higher education accessible in Oregon. ASPSU President Adam Rahmlow and Portland State President Wim Wiewel formed a united front against the state’s continued disinvestment in higher education, which they cite as the cause of the rising tuition and barriers for Oregon students to enter higher education.
The reality, however, is that the Oregon University System and PSU administrators are the ones who chose to raise summer tuition by 9 percent only a few months ago. They did this with a budget reserve of $52.8 million sitting in the bank, and ASPSU, the voice of the students of Portland State, said nothing and did nothing.
Which is precisely what they are doing again, now that Vice President Monica Rimai has said that the 2012–13 academic year will see an estimated 7 percent increase, on top of the 9.2 percent increase that students faced in 2011–12.
With money in the bank, real estate projects in the works and increases in enrollment for out-of-state students who pay higher tuition, the administration has a lot of nerve blaming our alleged financial crisis on the state legislature. ASPSU, meanwhile, is either completely ignorant or actively ignoring its constituency by avoiding the tough questions that must be posed to PSU administrators and OUS officials.
While it is true that legislators are decreasing their investment in higher education, it has become clear that PSU is also decreasing its investment in the intellectual development of its students. Quality instruction, intellectually challenging curriculum and reasonable class sizes at a price tag that the students of Oregon can afford are what a state university like PSU should be focused on, particularly during a recession. Instead, administrators are looking to their own future with new buildings that will take decades years to pay off and remodeling projects which they say students are asking them for—when in reality the only students they bother to ask are members of ASPSU. ASPSU, meanwhile, does little more than throw a party or a parade once each term in the hope that we might confound rhetoric with action. The only noticeable impact that ASPSU has on PSU is in blocking or approving the initiatives of other more industrious student groups on campus.
The state legislature will not decide what your tuition will be. People like Wim Wiewel and Adam Rahmlow, however, will sit around a table with OUS officials and they will negotiate on how much more money you will pay next year. Stop rallying and start asking ASPSU what they’ve done for you lately.