Are the Occupy movements starting to drift toward the classrooms? On November 17, several Pennsylvania College of Technology students “occupied” outside the Academic Success Center on Third Street, protesting against high tuition and demanding education equity.
Like members of the Occupy Movement in New York, the Penn College students want to demonstrate that the movement’s focus should be not just income inequality but also educational inequality. Our schools are a more sympathetic target than corporate CEOs, but for many Americans they are a larger cause of economic injustice. Most occupants have similar views, but many of them have different methods of expressing their thoughts. As occupier Logan Hinkley pointed out with a famous quote from George S. Patton, “If everyone is thinking alike, then someone is not thinking.”
What is the definition of educational inequality? When it comes to giving Americans an equal opportunity, our school systems are failing at the task. Here is the income-based gap: only 8% of low-income students get a college degree by the time they are 24, while 75% of affluent students do. This does not relate to big banks or corporations, but the students explain that the Occupy Movement, along with other worldwide movements, must open the eyes of the blind and demand change in a positive direction. The organizer of this Occupy Movement, Doug Bittner, explains, “Our movement shows that education is a universal right and should not be a competition between parents and kids for which they should go so deep into debt.” Another enthusiastic occupier, John Halford, states, “I plan on transferring to another college next year, and as I continue my search for a new school I must focus mainly on tuition, and it shouldn’t be this way.”
Professors are also getting involved in the action. Several are very fearful of what the future will be for their students and just want the best for them. Some instructors from Penn College have attended Occupy Wall Street because they believe it is a learning opportunity for college students. They believe they can teach students how to be civilly engaged in a protest, fight for what they believe in, and do what it is their responsibility to do: TEACH!
Josh Maurer is studying General Education at Penn College and is planning on transferring out of Pennsylvania next year to study English. When he’s not studying for school, he enjoys listening to live music of any kind.
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