Hey Board of Trustees! Have You Thought of This Way to Destroy Chicago State?

It looks like Anthony Young and Nikki Zollar are intent on destroying Chicago State University.  They have treated the students here as mere dollar signs (see recent blog posts for evidence).  But, of course, as most petty tyrants tend to be, they are shortsighted.  Their desire to maintain CSU as a haven for politically-connected incompetent friends has proven disastrous.  CSU is in grave danger and it is not simply due to Bruce Rauner's anti-working class agenda.  CSU was headed in the wrong direction ever since Leon Finney and friends decided to hire Wayne Watson as President against the desires of the campus community.  Now FOWs (Friends of Wayne) Young and Zollar (who has materially benefited from her FOW status) undermine us with 'financial exigency' (read: labor-busting tactic) and the Management Action Committee (MAC).  Rumor has it that President Calhoun is not doing as the petty oligarchs want so he may be on his way out.  How do they figure that this move will fulfill their mission to protect the university?

Of course, this is what you get when you have people running a university who have no idea what a university is or whose greed exceeds their good sense.  The trend in higher ed seems to be a corporate-style in which cost-cutting is paramount and paying executives ridiculously high salaries is the goal (again, see recent blog posts for details).  The downward spiral of education in this corporate-run country hit a new low at Long Island University this semester as faculty were locked out and their email accounts were shut down.  So, students paying $40,000+ per year now have classes consolidated, cancelled and taught by administrators who have no expertise in the areas they are 'teaching.'  Faculty, it seems, are simply replaceable parts in the big corporate university machine.

Long Island Univesity, like CSU, is a minority-serving institution.  Like CSU, it has a student body that consists overwhelmingly of people of color.  Could racism play a part in what we suffer here and what LIU students are suffering?    "But, but, but...the BOT, Wayne, Angela and them are Black.  They can't be racist.  In fact, you are the one who is racist for bringing this up!", many of my colleagues and 'supporters of diversity' have said and continued to say with their heads in the sand.  I invite you to read up a little bit on colonialism.  Familiarize yourself with the 'comprador class'. Always and every place where capitalism and colonialism go the bosses get 'natives' from the colonized population to do their bidding and control the masses.  It has been no different in the history of the United States or that of Chicago or Chicago State University.

While we suffer the BOT malice here at CSU, we haven't yet sunk to these depths.  Is this the future for CSU?  Only if we, students, staff and faculty, remain unconcerned or fearful as most of us have for the last 8 years and not realize our power as the ones who do the work here.  Like all workers under this dreadful system, we create the wealth, we make the place run.  How long will we let the petit bourgeois politicians and friends rake in the money whilst thousands of working-class, primarily Black, people suffer?  Is it time to get our heads out of the sand?

See this story for details on an even better way to ruin a university:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/13/everything_was_cut_immediately_liu_faculty