All Along the Watchtower...

Mario Savio is doing back flips from the grave. The apathy of the 80's and the 90's which hung like a pall over the Berkeley campus is receiving a swift kick in the pants from students, faculty and staff as a statewide walkout on all 10 UC campuses lurches forward today. It's a sobering fact, but unless the powerful Academic Senate is involved, protests usually crawl off into a corner to whimper and die. However, this has been a perfect storm brewing for months; Mark Yudof, the face of UC, the reigning SI Hayakawa of 2009, has taken a flying header with his constituents. Implementation of 11-26 furlough days; 30% increase in student tuition fees, and prohibiting the faculty to take furlough on their instructional days conjured up images of shoulders to the cogs and burning squad cars. It's one thing to screw staff and students, it's another, however to screw the faculty. When there is faculty inclusion, there is validation. It's a rank equation, but it's true. Some one told me that the walkout wouldn't accomplish or change anything. In some countries of the world, a gathering of 2 people on a corner is considered a protest. Gulags are filled with men and women who spoke out about inequality. I'm a child of the 60's. I've seen the impossible become possible...power to the people.