Generation Magazine

By Ren LaForme

This is where I’m supposed to write a thoughtful, melancholy editor’s letter about graduating, and how I’m going to miss my friends and all of the wonderful teachers I’ve had in the past five years—all before gracefully bowing out with my diploma. I could recall the times I rode the bus home from South Campus drunk, the long hours I spent hovering over textbooks, or the fun and exciting clubs I joined. Then, I could stereotypically spout off that pretty Robert Frost poem about taking the road less traveled, and wonder what the future will bring me. But that’s selfish. I want to leave you with something more substantial. Here goes.

Students at the University at Buffalo have a great chance of being fucked very hard.

The university is staring down two possible futures, both of them ugly and full of potential dangers for all UB students. Either the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act—also known as PHEEIA—will pass, or it won’t.

If PHEEIA is passed, it will be a huge victory for President John B. Simpson and his UB 2020 plan. The school will be able to raise or lower tuition as it pleases, sell and purchase land, increase partnerships with private corporations and—if things go as Simpson promises—bring prosperity to the ravaged Western New York economy. Most local media outlets have latched onto this idea. The Buffalo News and the Spectrum have both written editorials praising the UB 2020 plan, and supporting its efforts to revitalize the regional economy.

Of course, praising a goal is very different from praising the process to get to that goal. Everybody would love for WNY to blossom into a booming and vigorous region once again. But what would those same people be willing to trade for that flourishing? Would they be willing to gamble the futures of UB students in hopes that it will pay off in the long term? It seems so.

Nobody can say for sure what increased independence will do to UB. Administrators have promised not to raise tuition by dramatic amounts, and even argue that their plan will ensure that doesn’t happen. But what roadblocks are in place to slow them down if they suddenly decide they need more cash for UB 2020? Who will regulate the tuitions of state universities to ensure that they are in line with other public institutions? PHEEIA would take that role away from Albany, giving UB’s administration the ultimate authority to set tuition.

Two weeks ago, I used at least 100 clichés in my editor’s letter. Here’s one more. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. In the great chase to be one of America’s top research universities, UB is going to gut the rest of the undergraduate education experience. You hear that, humanities? Johnny B. is coming for you. He’s gobbling up English, art, history and languages like it’s nobody’s business. The humanities could soon be impotent.

Just this year, the administration looked into cutting departments like African & African American Studies and Global Gender Studies, and merging them with the American Studies department. Then, out of nowhere, they cut Methods of Inquiry from the course listings. Did you see director Kelly Ahuna’s face in the photograph accompanying the Spectrum article about the cut? Heartbreaking. And even more heartbreaking for the hundreds of students who utilize the techniques taught in that class to graduate. I took the class in early 2008, and found the techniques to be incredibly useful. No longer. Funding the muscular research arm of the downtown campus is infinitely more important. The major goal of higher education is to teach students. Performing research is a secondary concern.

If any members of the administration are reading this, please remember that when you cut funding for departments, you’re destroying somebody’s dreams. Remember when you were younger and wanted to be an astronaut, a firefighter or a ballerina? What if you were well on the path to that job and somebody decided that it was no longer worthy of funding? That happens to hundreds of students when you cut departments. Shame on you.

But I saved the best for last. As UB increases partnerships with private corporations, there is a distinct danger that the university will turn the reigns of its research schools over to private hands. When Kaleida owns a big chunk of the heart research building and provides big funding for certain projects, guess where the school’s focus is going to be? The research that corporations sponsor is going to garner a disproportionate amount of attention from researchers. Many research universities across the nation have fallen into this schema, and UB could be next.

But what happens if PHEEIA does not pass? Tossing skepticism to the wayside for a moment, I do think that PHEEIA and UB 2020 have some great ideas. Consolidating the medical schools onto the downtown campus where they can collaborate easily is a great idea, and the plans for new libraries and open learning centers look amazing. I didn’t always feel this way. Initially, I was a huge UB 2020 critic. I met with Robert Shibley, the architect of the UB 2020 plan, to discuss some of the concerns I had heard from students. He addressed most of them with well-thought-out logic. The only concern he couldn’t address with any substantial reason was the public/private partnership, saying that UB has historically done well with them.

However, students should be wary of any big changes unless they are granted a more substantial role in the process. The student seat on the UB Council is largely a token position. We need more. Legislators in Albany should pass PHEEIA only after modifying it to allow for increased transparency and increased student involvement on big decisions.

I recently received a letter from a student named Gary Christiano. He suggested that the comparison I made between modern students and protesters from the ’60s was a fallacy because “it was much easier to get fired up about the economic and political issues of that era” because of the very real threat of the draft. Increased tuition and fewer department options may not quite equate to the fear of death on foreign soil, but students need to realize that these are tough times.

In this economy, particularly in this state, students need to fight tooth and nail to keep a solid and well-balanced education. I urge next year’s Generation editors—as well as Spectrum editors and student leaders in all governments—to scrutinize and contest every cut and every downsizing. As watchdogs and leaders, it is your duty to defend your readership and constituencies, and stand up against those who have forgotten what it is to be a student.

For any administrators who would like to remember what that feeling is like, we’ve included two first-hand accounts of student life in this issue. Eric Fortier, a senior art major, sent us a brilliant account about transforming from a freshman business major into a graduating photographer. Jordan Brown, one of our associate editors, wrote a short article about his first year at UB. Both impeccably capture the essence of what it’s like to be a student.

Reworking Generation Magazine has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks to my amazing staff and Sub-Board I, Inc.—not the mention the support of founder Eric Francis Coppolino—it has been a beautiful semester for this magazine. If even a handful of you have enjoyed reading the magazine as much as I have had writing it, I know our hard work hasn’t been in vain.

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