Dressed as zombie bankers, college students representing Occupy Boston marched through the streets of downtown Boston on Monday chanting, “Money’s for jobs and education, not for banks and corporations.”
As part of the Colleges Occupy Boston movement, the protesters dressed in zombie makeup and wore business suits to the Halloween-themed walkout they organized as a call for affordable higher education.
About 200 students, who had walked out of class, met at the Boston Common gazebo to protest the increasing amount of student debt.
The Occupy Boston website calls out to local colleges for change claiming that, “…universities are acting more and more like corporations, handing
out big salaries and bonuses to administrators while workers on campus
struggle to make a living wage.”
During the march, participants stopped at the home of M. Lee Pelton, president of Emerson College. Emerson College students said that their purpose was not to “demonize” their president, but rather to ask for his support in reducing the costs of higher education.
The Occupy Boston movement, which celebrated its one month anniversary on Sunday, is not losing any momentum, participants said.
“What drew me in was the student debt issue, but what’s kept me around is the community that the movement has created,” said Kate Wheeler, a freshman at Lesley University who camped out at Dewey Square for two weeks before packing her bags.
She said the people at Dewey Square want to talk less about the snow they had over the weekend, and more about the issues at hand. Demonstrators said that the forthcoming winter will not dampen their efforts to see some change across the nation.
The two-hour march ended with a “die-in” where protesters feigned death and laid down in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Occupy Boston demonstrators said that they see their agenda as a small part of a bigger effort.
“A little anarchy is always good,” said Boston University College of Arts and Sciences junior Leandra Solis, a member of the BU Occupies Boston group. “People became complacent after the 70s, and more than anything else, this movement is beneficial because it’s making people think and is motivating them to become active participants in our democracy.”
Demonstrators said they were also showing their support for Scott Olsen, an Occupy protester who was hospitalized after a protest in Oakland that ended in what they called a “police attack.”
“This rally is a youthful expression of our intolerance for injustice,” said Karen Briggs, a student at Lesley University. “Occupy Boston has become known for being more serious and getting right down to the issues, but this march shows we can have a fun side, while remaining earnest about those issues most important to us.”
The final chant, “Education is a right, not just for the rich and white,” echoed off the walls of the Federal Reserve Bank and throughout Dewey Square.
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Great piece.
The cost of higher education is ridiculous, my son wanted to go to college but we could not afford so we choose the “High Speed Universities” for his education while working now he working for fortune 500
What is an entrenched system of resource rape and pillage, abusive and uncaring of ethics or human rights capable of in the face of a successful long term public outcry for justice and fairness?
What tactics might we see? Prescription drug shortages? Power outages? Infiltration of groups with violent provocateurs? News blackouts of events? Propaganda and misinformation?
What have they been teaching at the likes of Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government for the last 50 years? Look around the world. I see EXPLOITATION on a grande scale and I see people reacting instinctively against it.
I hope our future is not one of surrender to a zombie like state of followers back to the abusers who will not give up their tyranny without a fight. Hopefully that fight will be one that is won by an overwhelming collective consciousness and spontaneous awareness of justice. Our chance lies with the “Occupy ” movement. As in the time of Vietnam War, some COURAGEOUS JOURNALISTS
and POLITICIANS better get on the “correct” side of history and fast; something is happening here.
Want the cost of education to come down?
1. Get the government out of college lending
2. Let the interest on student loans rise to market
3. Let student loans be dismissible in bankruptcy court
4. Start teaching economics in high school again. Any student who thinks he can pay off a $150,000 college education with a $40,000 per year job, needs a refresher course in loan amortization and budgeting.
This idea that ““Education is a right, not just for the rich and white,” is preposterous because it actually violates individual rights to provide services (not rights) to others (as for the rich and white comment, you should know that enrollment growth is the highest for students of color).
Education has costs. The costs for such a service has to come from somewhere. Right now students are heavily subsidized by either the state (in the case of subsidies supplied through various state taxes), or the federal government (through various programs such as Pell Grants and subsidized government loans). But in order to obtain that money, it must first be taken from somebody; it is not given voluntarily (as in the case of private scholarships). Therefore, those who do not obtain an education are forced to subsidize the education of others, and students who jockey for position to receive their handouts are no different than the special interests they decry during OWS protests. How ironic!
As Ayn Rand has written, “The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.”
The last sentence is the most important – a right cannot exist at the expense of others. This is a fundamentally moral proposition.
I agree that the cost of higher education is too high, but we must correctly address the question, what is driving it? It’s certainly not the “bonuses” given to administrators. Spreading the cost of any bonus (or the collection thereof) across the student population is likely to see minuscule savings.
The chief cause of inflating costs has to do with the inflated credit bubble created by the federal government by creating financial aid programs. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But looking at empirical data suggests that tuition has significantly increased ever since the enactment of the Higher Education Act, which drove up demand. Federal assistance to combat increasing tuition only exacerbates the problem.
This is because the so-called “free money” being doled out to students gives a strong incentive for universities (public and private) to expand in many ways, whether it’s hiring more faculty in worthless degree programs not supported by the market, new construction (gymnasiums, student centers, etc), or lining the pockets of administrators (though I suspect this amount is small comparatively).
For more information, see this Policy Analysis from the Cato Institute:
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/13673226
These students are right and should keep on protesting! I hope the cold weather doesnt get to them. This article was also very well written- I look forward to reading more from this writer.