1. An old musty smell fills the engineering hallway as the lights flicker off in the corner. The pale blue door which has splotches of rust in the corner had a chipped “CIVIL ENGINEERING” written on the doors. Anyone could tell that time has taken its toll on the Sacket building. Everyone in the classrooms are drenched with sweat since there is no air circulating the room due to the lack of air conditioning and broken windows to prevent the cool breeze from flowing through the congested calculus class. The room has a faint white smog hanging above the black board from the old chalk erasers. If one were to look at the ground, there are a few tiles missing as a brown square filled its place overtime. As I ran my hand through the railing up the ramp, my skin would be pricked from the chipped paint. I went into the elevators to see what the upper levels looked like. As I was walking into the creaky elevators, I was taken back when the doors closed on my arms. Once I got in and I started to go to the second floor, I was taken back by all the shaking that took a good 30 seconds to get to the second floor. Clearly the engineering building is lacking in necessary funds for upkeep. As each generation has come and gone, many brilliant minds have walked through this hallway. This is where money needs to be put.
2. John Kuhl, Math 140 Professer at Penn State, in his 30’s or 40’s.
I asked him about the rising tuition for the students and before I could even finish my sentence he said: “Our pay went down and they cut funding to the departments.” This opened up a whole new set of ideas for me; that not only the students are having to pay more, but the teachers are getting paid less.
I asked him why he thought the rising tuition and budget cuts were due to and he responded saying: “It’s very simple, the freakin’ government stopped giving us money!” I already knew about the governor of Pennsylvania and his ruling, but his quote gives emotion to how people are responding to this.
“We’re getting on shaky boat territory. I don’t know if I’ll have a job [here] next year.” If even the teachers are getting nervous about job security at a 50,000 student school, that proves that there is seriously something wrong hidden beneath the surface.
3. I read an article on Centredaily.com News about Penn State students who protested this past February about the rising tuition and how they complete disagreed. They chanted, had drums, made posters, and marched to get the school’s attention and to provoke a change. But the only thing school advisors said about the issue was “to direct the message to Harrisburg.” Clearly at this stage of the budget, Penn State was putting all of the blame on our state government. http://www.centredaily.com/2011/02/23/2537715/students-protest-rising-tuition.html
3. I read an article on Centredaily.com News about Penn State students who protested this past February about the rising tuition and how they complete disagreed. They chanted, had drums, made posters, and marched to get the school’s attention and to provoke a change. But the only thing school advisors said about the issue was “to direct the message to Harrisburg.” Clearly at this stage of the budget, Penn State was putting all of the blame on our state government. http://www.centredaily.com/2011/02/23/2537715/students-protest-rising-tuition.html
This is an article from Uwire: The College Network. This article is in response to US News reporting that Penn State was the state school with the highest tuition. It included quotes from Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz who was deeply concerned about the high tution. She also made it clear that she wants the higher education that Penn State can offer to be accessible to everyone. There also included quotes from a few student, one who has a similar approach as myself. Alex Beck feels that “it’s the ‘unnecessary spending’ at Penn State that could be used to control tuition.” http://uwire.com/category/news/tuition/
4. While researching, I noticed a protest and a few organizations who are trying to fight back against this issue. I am interested to look into what steps have been taking to those individuals opposing the budget cuts and if there is room for change or if everything is set and stone. I am interested to see the future steps being done to fight the government. After I conduct a few local interviews with different professors and students, I am going to expand my investigation to a bigger scale. I am going to look more into the politics of the matter and the state government. I am going to see if I can get in touch with the state government, and with the minimal research I’ve done already, I have a strong feeling that I will be able to follow through with this. Because of the “Right to Know Law” there is certain information that is made available to the public. So I will see if there is any information about budget cuts on the governor’s website. But I also need to make sure I don’t go too much into the government and budget cuts, since my main question is where is the money going.
