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LOS ANGELES, CA — Students for Quality Education (SQE) is leading a campaign to defeat a proposed $560 fee hike at California State University, Dominguez Hills. SQE circulated an online petition via change.org asking the university’s President Hagan to remove his proposal. The petition with nearly 1,700 supporters, can be found at http://chn.ge/1k8mHLW.
SQE organized several actions during Hagan’s Week of Inauguration demanding that he respect the petition by dropping his proposal. This included actions on International Worker’s Day and for his inauguration the following day.
The fee hike defies the four-year freeze on tuition, pushes low-come students out, will force many students to work more and have less time to study effectively, hindering students’ ability to excel academically. Fifty-nine percent of the school’s students are classified as low income.
This alternative fee hike strategy is an attempt to avoid public scrutiny and accountability in three ways.
First, by using a divide-and-hike tactic to introduce fees campus-by-campus, obscuring what is in reality a system-wide hike, in defiance of Governor Jerry Brown’s freeze on
SQE can be contacted at csudh.sqe1@gmail.com .tuition.
Second, by actively co-opting student governments who have questioned new fees in the past, administrators are grooming student government leaders and coaching them on how to best “sell” the new fees to students, and without allowing for a referendum vote by the general student body.
Third, the usage of Orwellian language, such as the word “success,” is used to spin the issue. Internal communications within Associated Students Inc., reveal that the funds may in fact be used for campus beautification projects or new buildings. One is a proposed recreational building that ASI is working to establish.
There is an effort to remarket CSUDH as “The Cal State of the South Bay” and attract more students from the beach cities. In the first fee forum, Hagan argued, “We need to raise fees to compete with other campuses . . . because students are passing us by to go to Fullerton and Long Beach.” In effect, they are continuing to push out low-income students in favor of said population.
I’d like to note that the population of African-American students has dropped from 28% in 2009 to 17% in 2013. The process is completely undemocratic. Showpiece “transparency” in one-sided stage-managed “forums” do not equate to campus democracy.
Administrators are also undermining campus democracy by not adequately informing students that the already poorly advertised “alternative consultation” forums held on their campuses are part of one of two methods allowed for implementing campus-based fees. The alternate method is that of a referendum vote, which would allow for the democratic participation of all students in deciding whether or not to increase fees. Considering the successful student mobilizations against fee increases that occurred less than two years ago, administrators undoubtedly fear that the student body may vote against the fees.
Once a fee hike is implemented, the amount can be raised easily without informing the majority of students. The only requirement is holding an “alternative consultation.” Also, there is no legal obligation for the administration to incorporate any of the feedback from said consultation.
SQE can be contacted at csudh.sqe1@gmail.com .
