Pot and the Student Movement
Oren Klein | Apr 25, 2010 | Comments 1
This year we have seen a surge in student activism. There is an ideological rift between those who consider privatization the solution to our failing education system and people like me who believe that education is not a commodity. Education is a right. Well, it should be a right.
I am genuinely confused by the protests on our campus. We wander from issue to issue, grocery shopping for demands, with no aim or focus but to throw asunder the “heterosexual, white-male dominated, capitalist and oppressive system.” While this goal is necessary, and the message inspiring, it is grandiose and fragmented. By having competing interests fused into one mega-platform we are, in my opinion, pissing into the wind.
In the name of solidarity, the mega-platform alienated communities from the decision-making process, an act with degenerative effects for a movement professing to “democratize” education. Is it not a sketchy goal to “democratize” every aspect of this world?
I am altogether nervous about the use and abuse of rhetoric, especially when commandeering democracy to fulfill various political agendas; at some point a term gets so diluted its meaning becomes useless.
Though it is easy to focus on my dissatisfaction, and obvious that such a vision requires patience, this article aims to advocate a step in the right direction. There is a common bond among campuses in the UC system, one that specifically addresses the budget crisis and our failing state economy. Each campus has its own issues, and to each its own political and cultural climate; however, we are united in our efforts to combat our failing economy and reinvest into education. Such a goal, however, requires something the current protests lack.
We can all dream of a world where education is available and affordable for all, but we know that nothing is free. The state funds less than 20 percent of our public university in Irvine. We have low-income students competing for limited resources and financial aid. What is missing is a source of income to offset the crisis. The state simply doesn’t have enough money to in-source all our workers (important as it is), reduce student fees, improve financial aid opportunities, and close the budget deficit all in one flick of a pen. Our state, simply put, is in a crisis where the quality of education is its collateral damage.
Call me a hippie, call this next idea immature and idealistic, but 70 years of marijuana prohibition is costing our state too much money. Incarcerating our youth for non-violent drug offences and restricting these future students’ access to financial aid is altogether counterproductive (see the Higher Education Act’s drug provision – ironic as it is). While we can reduce wasted resources by repealing drug prohibition, our state would gain enormous quantities of revenue with the taxation of cannabis and the reinvigoration of the hemp industry. If we as a society have learned anything from alcohol prohibition of the 1920s, it is that prohibition simply does not work. Educating our youth and providing avenues for individuals to move up through society is more important than punishing people for petty crimes.
The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act will be on the November 2010 ballot to address one aspect of the failing War on Drugs. Several students at UCI are hoping to amend the bill, and draft legislation to pressure our state into allocating 20 to 50 percent of this tax directly to public education. Such an amendment will provide a legitimate source of income to offset our state’s budget crisis and fund education.
On Friday, April 30, several students will be teaming up with Ramon Quintero and Outernational (a politically conscious rock group from New York), to advocate for a solution to our budget crisis. Come join the second annual Down for the Cause Festival from 4-6 p.m. outside the Student Center for a chance to talk about the amendment, and from 7-10 p.m. at the Student Center Stage for a concert headlined by Outernational followed by a gathering at the Anthill Pub.
Oren Klein is a fourth-year political science major. He can be reached at oklein@uci.edu.
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While this piece seems to come from a genuinely well-intentioned place, it is confused, misleading and illogical. For the sake of the author, and for other folks who will later read this piece, I’d like to dispel some of the false statements and illustrate some of the lapses in logic.
The only person talking about ‘throw[ing] asunder the “heterosexual, white-male dominated, capitalist and oppressive system,”’ is Oren Klein, and this “abuse of rhetoric” reveals a profound absence of knowledge about the student movement on our campus as well as contemporary Left movements, generally. When student-activists talk about challenging interlocking social systems of white supremacy, capitalism, heterosexism and patriarchy, we are speaking from an analysis of modern social structures. That is, we’re not talking about wicked heterosexuals or shady white males or some vague concept called ‘capitalism,’ we’re talking about social structures that privilege being heterosexual, white and/or male and penalize being queer, non-white, and/or female.
So, if you don’t have an understanding of that on your own (and it seems you don’t), don’t presume to put your words into the mouths of student-activists who do.
Similarly, don’t pretend to be on the side of student-protesters (especially those assembled under the banner of ‘democratize education’) when you have reservations about radical expressions of democracy. If you think it’s ‘sketchy’ for students and/or workers to control their own schools and/or places of work, then you’re not interested in democracy and you’d do well enough to leave alone folks who are alone.
However, if you are interested in learning more about the goals of the folks who joined together as ‘democratize education,’ you could simply read their article in the New U from March 29, 2010 (http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/03/opinion/democratize-education/). I would point you towards the second to last paragraph which reads:
‘Our demands are only one approach to the problems facing students and workers in the UC, but it is heartening to see so many students supporting and engaging with them. We support free association, so if you disagree with our approach or our demands, we welcome you to start your own group and make your own demands.’
Then there are a few sweeping statements you make without any factual basis: that ‘our state… is in a crisis where the quality of education is its collateral damage.’ Here you completely ignore every time the student movement has placed the current budget ‘crisis’ and fee increases in the historical context of a decades-long neo-liberal divestment from social services. Our public universities have been under attack since before we were born, this isn’t some new thing that came up when the housing bubble burst. If you don’t know that, how can you possibly consider yourself qualified to say anything to anyone about the subject, much less share your thoughts with the whole school?
Of course, the real issues of logic come into play once you move away from attacking the student movement and move toward the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act.” After five paragraphs of clumsily assailing the student movement, you offer two paragraphs of your alternative vision, namely, regulating and taxing (though not de-criminalizing) marijuana.
If that is your vision, it is not hippie-esque or idealistic so much as it is contrived and cynical. ‘Our state would gain enormous quantities of revenue’? Even though the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office only estimates ‘savings of up to several tens of millions of dollars annually’ (from the Tax Cannabis website: http://www.taxcannabis.org/index.php/pages/analysis/) from not incarcerating some offenders, and ‘unknown but potentially major tax, fee, and benefit assessment revenues’ from the legal sale of marijuana.
And we must keep in mind that this source of unknown revenue is coming straight from California’s middle and working classes. Rather than a severance tax on oil drilling (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/15/business/fi-hiltzik15) or simply enforcing the existing tax code (billions are lost each year because wealthy individuals, businesses and corporations short-change on their taxes), you propose yet another sales tax to be paid by Californian workers.
I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to legalize marijuana, it’s a perfectly fine idea, but be realistic about the current bill. Will there be fewer people sent to jail for drug-crimes or just fewer white people going to jail for them? The Act still carries stiff jail sentences for a number of marijuana-related infractions, like possessing more than 1 oz. of marijuana or possessing with intent to sell. All the act does is allow historically un-policed and un-surveilled communities (middle class white college students like you and I) the protection of the law while leaving unprotected historically over-policed and over-surveilled communities (black and hispanic people, the poor).
Like I said before, this article is confused and uninformed, I offer these comments as a palliative for the misinformation and illogic that readers of the original must wade through.