On Friday October 13 1995 a hearing for Higher Education was held at the the P.K. Yonge School between 10am and 2pm. Shocked they were. Where were all the students supposedly concerned about the plight of higher eduction? How dare they not notice the Higher Eduction Committee's trouble and expense arranging this meeting of the minds. This was an opportunity cast by students into the winds of apathy due to lack of interest. Or was it? The results of this hearing were easily predictable. Lack of student participation is not a result of student dinterest. It is the corollary of a lack of information, nonadvertisement, inaccessibility, evasive scheduling, and predetermined agendas that beg the question. This is the rule not the exception to informing and including students in their own education.
We are experiencing an educational crisis. This is not a test. In the event you are slammed by tuition gouges, financial aid cuts, gross complacency among your university's administration and incorrigible collaboration by your state and federal representatives you should turn to your local student government for information and directions. Unfortunately that option does not exist at the University of Florida.
Save Our Schools (SOS) was founded to provide the missing forum for students to discuss and act upon critical issues in education. Threats to public eduction are not being addressed by our current Student Government and Administration.
Where are the current official forums of higher education debate? A high school auditorium on a Friday, during class hours, the day before a Florida-Auburn Football away game. Why weren't President Lombardi and Senator George Kirkpatrick available for student's questions at a reasonable hour in a rational location like the University of Florida Campus?
Students are programmed to be "apathetic". The lack of knowledge is stronger than any direct means of repressing information. Students should not have to "hunt" if they are really interested for this data. Students need to be surrounded by facts from which they can join the discussion, ask their own questions and propose their own solutions to their education.
Affordability, quality of education and value of the degrees received are fundamental concerns of all students. The simple lack of emphasis placed on informing students about eduction issues does not excuse those in possesion of the public record from not freely diseminating their self-privilegded knowledge.
SOS addresses the fraud of privatization, the shame of decreasing financial aid and increasing aid requirments. Efficiency is not necessarilly condusive to quality eduction and the streamlining proposals made in the past by the Higher Education Committee would only devalue the education process and mass produce worthless degrees.
Financial aid cuts from Pell grants to state grants is prohibiting an entire class of perfectly capable students from entering university.
Increasing requirements for qualifying for financial aid make those funds that are available even further from praticle reach.
Through our SPEAKOUTS and communiques we demand directly that educational resources be not just maintained but increased.These events and sharing of information allow students to reemphasize education's importance to the future of our country, our state, and our lives. We directly challenge the disproportionate and untouched expenses of education's administration.
Our administration sadly shakes its collective noggins at the lack of student concern over the delapidated, overcrowded and under funded state of the university.
The sad truth is that we are not informed of the critical condition of eduction by the administration and we as students are better seen paying than heard telling our leaders and representatives that they are wrong to ignore us.
37 % of UF students never graduate
(data from UF office of Inst. Res. Feb. 1994)