On Tuesday, our beloved News-Gazette wrote an editorial entitled “Campus Disgrace,” which made the rounds on social media as people from both sides of the political spectrum chimed in to leave their two cents on the Governor’s visit to town last week. The harsh newspaper response came after multiple protesters went up to Rauner, infuriated, and demanded answers for the lack of a budget or higher education funding, something that hits very close to home in Champaign-Urbana, and something that the towns need for survival.
In the editorial, the author (who curiously remained nameless, although one can assume it was written by a higher-up editor at the N-G) proceeds to claim that the state of modern education is in shambles, protesters are “anti-democratic” and even, I shit you not, compared all U of I students to Nazis.
My mother’s work at EIU put food on our table for my entire life – just like the hundreds who were laid off earlier this year. Now, like the rest of EIU, she has taken a pay freeze just to see her students graduate, all due to Rauner’s childish insistence to not pass a budget that funds higher education. So naturally, I take great issue with the News-Gazette’s editorial. In fact, I find it broadly offensive and disgusting at its core.
Getting things started off right, the first line of the piece reads:
“The vulgar, abusive and disruptive behavior aimed at the state’s chief executive should not be tolerated.”
First and foremost – I believe we live in the United States of America, and one of the freedoms that we have is speech. Sure, there are limits on what we can and can’t say, but we certainly do have the freedom to protest and the freedom to tell politicians how we feel. This line from the News-Gazette sounds like totalitarianism at its best. Protests “should not be tolerated”? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s a basic right that we have as Americans. If we’re mad, we don’t just have to sit down and accept abuses of power. We get to stand up to them. Quit shaming us for that.
The above statement from the N-G is even more ironic when you read what comes below:
“It is, however, deeply regrettable that a great institution like the UI should have community members who so willingly and enthusiastically embrace this kind of anti-social, anti-democratic behavior.”
Excuse me? Is protesting a politician not “democratic behavior”? I could be wrong here, but I think it could be (and has been) easily argued that the freedom to protest falls at the intersection of the Freedom of Assembly and the Freedom of Speech, both of which are included in the Bill of Rights for every citizen in America, in case the News-Gazette needed a refresher. Sometimes, politicians piss us off. Sometimes, politicians aren’t really politicians at all; in this case, it’s a profit-driven venture capitalist businessman from the north shore of Chicago, and he doesn’t care about us or our interests and make that evident through their legislation.
If that is the case, it is not undemocratic of us, citizens of downstate Illinois, to make our voices heard. In fact, it’s more democratic. So fuck off, News-Gazette. Telling people not to stick up for their own beliefs is actually anti-democratic. I hear Parkland is offering some great American History classes this summer – perhaps whoever wrote this article may want to invest some time in that.
As the article continues, it goes on to say:
“Members of this goon squad could have made their point in an effective, but [sic] nondisruptive way.”
First of all, I didn’t know that anyone at the ‘ol N-G knew how to use the word “squad” in a sentence, but here we are, slowly transitioning into 2016. That was the literal only part of the article that made me smile.
All jokes aside, however, I would like to ask the author just how much more we can do to get our voices heard? I, personally, have called both of Governor Rauner’s offices once a week to try to be heard about the budget crisis – and I’m sure thousands of others have as well. Meanwhile, only limited progress has been made, all while the Governor has hired an aide for his wife who costs $100,000 a year, has been largely to blame for the layoffs of hundreds of employees from various state universities, and has crippled the state university system as a whole for years to come.
It’s been over 300 days without a state budget, and it’s come down to the point where people are losing their jobs and having to change their entire lives just because the Governor is bent on destroying higher education. If all of these calls and popular support don’t change his mind, as seems to be the case, perhaps shouting is the only way to get noticed. Perhaps citizens are acting out of desperation. We don’t owe Governor Rauner some facade of respect any more, because it’s very clear that he doesn’t respect us.
Maybe we owed him some respect before he axed hundreds of people, strangled already-cash-strapped institutions and services and left Illinois’ universities in shambles, but he did that, so now, we get to be mad about it. Cool? Seems rational to me.
The real winner of this editorial, however – where the News-Gazette really shows it’s genius at work – is the final paragraph, which reads:
“The sheer ugliness of the display is a blot on this campus, and we look forward to President Timothy Killeen’s and interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson’s denunciation of this conduct … They’ve already condemned the recent drawing of swastikas on some campus buildings and properly so. Now let them hold forth on the kind of behavior by UI students that those swastikas represent.”
Let’s go ahead and forget that this was written like it is the 1600’s for a second, because that’s a separate issue, but what I’d like to focus on is how the author compares all U of I students to Nazis.
Seriously.
I can’t make this up.
Read it again if you have to.
What I think is lost on the News-Gazette, here, is that the students and faculty who protested are the ones in danger, not the Governor. Nothing about shouting at the governor by a group of protesters even remotely gives the N-G cause to purport that all U of I students are Nazis. Sorry. It’s just a faulty argument from the get-go, and really terrible form by whoever chose to write this.
I wonder if the author of this has spoken to anyone who’s been laid off at EIU or Chicago State. These are the lives of human beings that are being drastically altered just because our childish Governor is insistent on a turnaround agenda that hurts Central Illinois. Champaign-Urbana is next if we don’t do anything. And thus, protesters aren’t out of line at all; in fact, I’m proud of them for trying to get an answer out of someone who continues to ignore the struggle of downstate Illinoisians.
I know this N-G writer has a hard time with rough language, as evidenced by his editorial, but please, let me extend my largest and most thoughtful “fuck you” to them. Hopefully they don’t call me a Nazi because of that…
(Photo by USA Today)