The bottom line is we need to reeducate politicians in Lansing about the value of education.
Like babies learning their first suckle, these so-called lawmakers are fidgeting about embracing the idea of the Michigan Promise Scholarship that holds the promise of empowering young people in the state through college scholarships.
So in the budget rush they gutted the Michigan Promise that at first was going to secure the educational future of 96,000 students in the state. Three thousand of those students attend Wayne State University, right in our backyard.
How many times has it been emphasized that education is the best legacy any community or nation can bequeath on its people?
To buttress this fact, show me an educated nation, and I will show you a community that is thriving on all levels because its people have a consciousness.
Despite the downturn of the economy and its biting effects in the state, the promise of real transformation came with the arrival of the Michigan Promise created by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
But now that good educational news is being greeted with Lansing lawmakers double-talking, and like Squealer in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” they are engaging in propaganda, misinformation and outright lies with the aid of the tea party protesters.
“Blame it all on Granholm” they want you to believe and none on those who are also elected to represent their constituents in dire need of educational support.
They brag about defending what Michiganders want, including young people, but will eliminate resources that will put meaning to their claims.
Let’s face it.
The Republicans can dislike Gov. Granholm’s approach to critical issues in the state, and perhaps not utilizing the bully pulpit to the extent we’d prefer, but don’t make students pay for it or become the victims of the vitriolic attack on the Granholm administration.
So on the morning of Nov. 23, Wayne State University students took to the streets to send a message to lawmakers who are pretending not to hear.
The students made it clear that Lansing can add more money to the prison system, paying as much as $30,000 to incarcerate each inmate while students of public universities are only receiving $5,700 each.
The sad reality is that we have no problem putting more people behind bars but find it difficult to educate more of our young people, who are the future. That is such a ridiculous priority for leaders who claim they know best regarding what is best for the future of the state.
When Granholm announced that she wanted to release some 5000 parole-eligible inmates in the midst of the financial crunch, all hell broke loose. Lawmakers and their counterparts in government were screaming that our streets will be unsafe.
During the campaign against releasing prisoners, they never told us that there are many prisoners behind bars today eligible to be released, but are still incarcerated and taxpayers are paying for their upkeep.
The pushback against Granholm’s prison proposal was so strong that some elected officials used it as a political milking pot to show how strong they were on crime.
Yet these same elected officials, some of whom are not lawmakers in Lansing, are now nowhere to be seen defending the right to education.
We cannot expect them to add their voices to the call for the restoration of the Michigan Promise, even if it affects students in their own areas.
The political theater and contradictions unfolding now are disturbing.
And like Marcellus telling Horatio in Shakespeare that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” to which Horatio responded “Heaven will direct it,” we have to accept the fact that something is rotten in the state of Michigan.
Our problem is that we don’t know who will direct it and whether the 2010 gubernatorial campaign will have answers when many of the same problem starters will pretend to have the cure to Michigan’s ills.
The double jeopardy will only continue to encourage students graduating from Michigan colleges to leave in record numbers to other states, seeking greener pastures.
The state has about 15 public universities that are supposed to be serving 300,000 students every year.
Guess what?
About half of those are leaving and over 60 percent of graduates who have left have indicated they have no intention of returning to the state.
“I earned the $4,000 that the Michigan Promise offers. But because of budget cuts, I and many of my classmates will not be receiving any of the scholarship money that we have earned. Where are we going to find the money at this late date to pay our tuition bills?” Wayne freshman Dana Paglia asked at the Monday rally held in front of the WSU Welcome Center. “I find it absolutely ridiculous that out of all the budget cuts our state could be making, it is always the schools that get money taken away from them. They are taking away scholarship money to students who have worked hard through their high school years and would like to continue working hard for their college education.”
If undercutting efforts to prevent the mass exodus of graduates leaving the Wolverine state is the new norm in Lansing, then we should forget about the future of Michigan.
In fact, the idea that lawmakers would have the temerity to underfund the Michigan Promise, like George Bush underfunded No-Child-Left-Behind that eventually left every child behind, is bad public relations for the state. It does not augur well for anyone looking to come to Michigan.
If Michigan’s leaders cannot take care of their own, how do they intend to sell the state as a beacon of hope despite its current economic woes?
“I find it hard to believe that those who have committed crimes and are in jail have state-of-the-art facilities and cable television, while college students who have worked hard their whole lives are getting their hard earned scholarship funds taken away,” Paglia lamented. “Someone has to fight for us and stand up for us. No one in Lansing is listening. They are ruining our future and the future of this state. The Michigan Promise Scholarship was just about the only good thing our state had going for us.”
Aaron Petcoff, another WSU student who heads the group As Soon As Possible, said it is outrageous that “decision makers think it’s more important to fight meaningless wars, put people in prison and give bonuses to corporate executives than to make sure that people have access to education.
“In 2001, tuition at Wayne State cost under $4,000. Today it costs around $9,000. Administrators at Wayne estimate that in five years they’ll raise tuition. Every chance they get the decision makers in Lansing have been cutting back funding for education and raising funding for prisons. That tells me that they would rather us be locked up in a cell than get an education.”
Petcoff reminded his colleagues at the rally that the stakes are high and the choices are clear.
“It’s education versus incarceration. Education versus unemployment, and the politicians in Lansing keep making the wrong choice,” he said. “Is this our vision for a better world? Where we are in debt for 30 years paying off our loans?
Where we stress out every time we sign up for classes and wonder how we are going to pay for them?”
And like the history of any popular str
uggle begun with mass mobilization with students at the center, Petcoff urged his fellow students to make an outcry against educational cuts a movement for real change.
And if Lansing lawmakers are buying time to enjoy their Thanksgiving dinners while students of the Michigan Promise are made to wait in vain, I urge these so-called leaders to read what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said about time in the “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”:
“Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
Watch senior editor Bankole Thompson’s weekly show, “Center Stage,” on WADL TV 38, Saturdays at 1 p.m. This Saturday’s program, Nov 28, will feature an exclusive interview with the new leadership of the Detroit Charter Commission, Freman Hendrix and Jenice Mitchell Ford. The interview will be followed by a roundtable with Nancy Kaffer of Crain’s Detroit Business and Noah Ovshinsky of WDET-101.9 FM. E-mail bthompson@michronicle.com.