Two weeks from Friday, I’ll be defending my dissertation. It’s a moment five and a half years in the making, one that I’ve been excited for and nervous about for years. I should be eagerly anticipating the moment I step up to that podium, and even more eagerly anticipating the moment I step down, when if all goes well I’ll transition from PhD Candidate to University of Hawaii Alumnus. Instead, the thought of being an alum of this school leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Right now, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa is in bad shape. Years of budget mismanagement have led to a terrifying crisis, in which the main teaching departments are struggling to afford the instructors and teaching assistants they need to meet the demand of their students. The Vice Chancellor for Administration, Finance & Operations, Kathy Cutshaw, has been giving a “budget roadshow” presentation showing that the university it outspending its tuition revenue by almost $31 million. The Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Reed Dasenbrock, has pushed the colleges to immediately cut spending to rectify this, though such cuts are deep and harm the quality of education that can be provided to the university’s students. The Chancellor, Robert Bley-Vroman, however, keeps telling the media that the university as a whole is “in the black.” There is no transparency, no explanation for Dasenbrock’s sudden urgency, and no reason why dozens of TAs are fearful of the future—of what is coming next fall even if, as Dasenbrock is now saying, it doesn’t come this spring.
UH is not the only university in the country with systemic budget problems. It’s not the only university where graduate students are not unionized, leaving them unprotected. It’s not the only university where politics and greed have trumped the mission of the school to provide a quality education. And it’s not the only university where the graduate students have been compelled to rise up and fight back. But it’s not any university—it’s my university.
Ani DiFranco once sang “We have to be able to criticize what we love, say what we have to say. ‘Cause if you’re not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.” I love the University of Hawaii. I love the lab that has been my home away from home, the colleagues that have become my family, and the school that has allowed me to get to this point in my career. It is because I love UH that I have to tell its story. I have to explain why almost 100 students marched around campus yesterday morning in red, screaming for change. Those students and I have only just begun to fight to save the school they love as dearly as I do. We won’t give up, not until we have a university that we can be proud of. Continue reading “Paradise in Trouble”
