Hawai‘i’s economic crisis and political leaders are hurting the quality of education for students in the UH system.
That was the overall message at a Teach-In at the UH- Mānoa’s Hawai‘i Hall held Oct. 7. The event brought together hundreds of students and speakers urging resistance to more cuts to higher education.
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Among the speakers was a Kapiolani Community College instructor who spoke about the effects of the cuts on community college students transferring to UH-Mānoa.
She said these students may not be able to get into the classes they need because of reduced course offerings and record enrollment. She added that further cutbacks would only increase the problem.
Then, a UH-Mānoa student spoke candidly about his concerns: going to the UH Web site only to find that classes are unavailable, or going to class and realizing that there are more students than seats.
Mari Matsuda from the William S. Richardson School of Law also talked about the current situation.
She said, “Here at UH, we use all of our energy trying to fill in the gaps and keep morale and learning high, when our classes are overcrowded, our technology falters, our library can’t subscribe to the journals we need, and our deferred maintenance problem is so bad that buildings are condemned because they are about to fall down.”
She added, “Our political leaders are apparently willing to let education go down before they take responsibility for their past mistakes to fix this budget crisis.”
UH-Mānoa accounting professor John Wendell said, “All (the state) has to do is move the money around in the (state) general fund. The state of Hawai‘i is nowhere near running out of money.”
Shanah Trevenna, leader of the Sustainable Saunders project at UH-Mānoa, spoke of energy conservation as another solution.
“If we (UH-Manoa) were to save two-thirds of our energy bill, that’s $20 million. Our findings show that’s entirely possible. We can serve the environment and also save the money we need to redirect to all those things that are being taken away right now.”
Matsuda asked the question, “Brothers and sisters, are you ready to fight for a first-class education?’
When the crowd screamed, “Yes!” and applauded loudly, the message seemed to be that education was still a priority worth fighting for.
