Campus Radicals on the March

[Geee]

Front Page Magazine:

 

The latest attempt by the radical Left to capitalize on the neo-communist movement known as OWS is emanating from an old source. The “new” Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which derives its name, inspiration, and mission from the original SDS of the ’60s, is calling for a “Day of Action” scheduled for March 1st. The rhetoric is tiresomely familiar. “We believe that education is a right, not an economic privilege for the advantaged,” says their website. ”We demand and fight for a university that is for everyone! … We want student, worker and faculty control over our universities; we should be in control of our own futures and lives.”

 

Hoping to channel the mob-rage made so fashionable by the broader Occupy movement, it is no surprise who these students blame for their woes. “We refuse to pay for the crisis created by the 1%. We refuse to accept the dismantling of our schools and universities, while the banks and corporations make record profits. We refuse to accept educational re-segregation, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization. They got bailed out and we got sold out. But through nationally coordinated mass action we can and will turn back the tide of austerity.”

 

But don’t count on the campus Left acknowledging government culpability in the crisis it bemoans. It was government, after all, that threatened banks with fines and other restrictions if they refused to lower their lending standards to accommodate mortgage applicants who had no business owning a home.

 

Likewise, government has also facilitated the enormous increases in college tuition. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education discovered college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, while median family income rose 147 percent. Why? Because taxpayers are guaranteeing student loans (to the tune of $1 trillion currently)–all of which were taken over by the government in 2010 as part of Obamacare. Thus, colleges have no incentive whatsoever to lower their costs.