As an immaculate planner, there has never been a semester that I have had difficulty finding a schedule that works flawlessly. One that fits in rhythm with the various activities I have engrossed myself in; ranging from club meetings as a student officer to a dedicated intern for a state assemblywoman. That was true until the beginning of this semester.
Contrary to certain perceptions, a 294.00 tuition increase is not maintaining the availability of classes and possibly, the quality, of education in the California State University system. The experience of my first week as a senior has give an unfortunate, but personal, taste of the effects that budget cuts in California is having on numerous students throughout the state.
As a senior entering into the first semester of my fourth year, I personally had been enrolled in each class I needed to earn my degree this fall. That is correct, it would have been possible for me to graduate in only three and a half years; quite an achievement I would have been proud of. However, one of the mandated classes that I was enrolled in for my degree in Government-Journalism was dropped before school even started. It quickly became an administrative nightmare to try to overcome. I have reluctantly settled to pick up a minor and graduate in the spring instead.
Despite a slight annoyance at not graduating this semester, I eagerly began my week on Monday to attend the three classes I was fortunate to get into. As I show up for my first class of the day, Western Philosophy, I am surprised to see no instructor in the classroom. I had unknowingly enrolled in an eLearning class, which meant that our classroom merely displayed a live televised version of the class (this was actually a welcomed surprise for most students). However, it was by mere fortune that one student in the classroom knew how to operate the classroom projector because there was only a mere note on the chalkboard instructing us to turn to channel 30. Interestingly, I was not the only student who was expecting a professor in the classroom. I'm not sure why I was surprised to find that a quality education has been reduced to a handwritten note instructing us to turn on T.V.
After going through the introductory motions of the first day of school, filled with mispronounced roll calls and repetitive syllabuses, I was looking forward to the last class of the day. Upon my five-minute early entrance to this class, I had found myself stepping into a furnace. There were already more students than desks crammed into one of the campus's smaller classrooms and an even greater number of students trailing behind. Lets not forget, I was early. Sitting in the stifling heat at a small table in the front corner of the classroom craning my neck forward desperately trying to read the potential test material on the chalkboard regarding something important (I recall something about a constitution), I was merely thrilled I was not the unfortunate late student sitting on the floor in front of the doorway. As this was an American political thought class, my thoughts began to dwell on our nation's political roots.
In ancient Greece there was a legislator that made the death penalty a common form of punishment for even minor of offenses. His name was Draco, hence the term draconian. Although my life is not quite at stake here, the term does seem to apply towards the administrative behavior of our beloved school. Ancient Greece also gave birth to democracy, which begs the question, how would things be different at Sacramento State if decisions were made a little bit more democratically?
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