Howard Beale, irate news anchor from the 1976 film, Network, has a lesson or two for my fellow students.
Most of which can be summarised into his famous war cry:
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!!!"
I was very lucky to join university when I did. Ours was the last year before the major fees hike. Now, all the students who follow are looking at £9,000 per year for minimum three years and a debt that will follow and likely outlast their eventual death.
But to add insult to injury, I have since discovered (if my information is correct) that at my particular university, not only is the fee increase applicable but students will also have a decrease in their annual bursary from £500 a year to £100. Bursaries are different from university to university. The government gives incentives to hand them out but it is not compulsory. Some universities have them, some don't. With ours, we are given this award but we can only spend it through the university's own shop. (The profit going back into the coffers). Not only that but any unspent money at the end of the degree, if students fail to fill out the complicated forms, go back into the university's system and what can be bought at the shop is very restrictive. Paper module readers are provided by the university at a cost but are not covered under the bursary so students have to dig into their living allowance to pay for them. Students doing film degrees have access to some amazing electronic equipment - computers, software, digital cameras etc so fair play for that but try asking for dvds that relate to coursework or dissertation and watch the barriers come up.
Yet, as I've said, even with the restrictiveness, I have been lucky......lucky?? Wait, am I wrong in thinking there was a time when education was free? When education, as I believe it should be, was not restricted by who could afford it, but who had the drive to achieve it?
Like Mr Beale, I am mad! I am mad for myself, someone who is being told by a government whose generation received a next to free education that I must spend years in debt for a privelege....a privelege that in their generation was a right...
but most of all I am mad for those coming after. For those that will be longer and deeper in debt than I but MOSTLY for those that will not be able to afford the "privilege" at all. If £9,000 a year is not enough to turn prospective students away, then the lack of support during the studies may well be. Not all students can rely on Mummy and Daddy handouts to get by.
It all leaves me with a very bitter taste in my mouth and the persistent and pervasive thought that this is some kind of governmental survival technique....for the well educated would surely not vote them back in...
So why then, students, young people in general, aren't you getting mad? Yes, there have been a couple of protests but on a daily basis, I see no evidence of such passion. There seems to me a severe excess of apathy with the whole thing. I am sure it can't be because you have no feeling about your future. Perhaps you feel pessimistic about the future as a whole...or is it because you feel powerless? Well, if so, listen to this....where did the Hungarian revolution begin?? ...In the universities. Where did the very concept of Green politics begin? In the universities. Student protest played a major part in the African-American civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War and the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. The overthrowing of the Greek dictatorship in the 70s has a rather bloody and sad history but again, its beginnings lie in the educational institutions.
I am by no means suggesting a coup against the Tory government... or am I? (probably not. Lol) but merely trying to show you that students are far from powerless within the political arena.
An increase in fees may seem a small thing when put up against issues such as human rights, needless war or the environment but small things often become big things (said the actress tothe bishop)and you do not have to accept that this is how things are. You do not have to accept that you haven't the ability to change it. You are the only ones who CAN change it. You are the only ones who can tell the government that it is unacceptable that they choose whether or not you get an education.
The government is there to work for you, not the other way around....so get a little bit mad, let them know that your voice deserves to be heard.
Tell them, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"
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