Education and Social Justice

Peruse this article about our next Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. While you read it, think about how social justice ties in with education. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/betsy-devos-nominee-education-secretary.html

Read this article on the current state of public education and more specifically what it's like for underrepresented minority students: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/public-schools-minority-students_b_1408878.html

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/how-funding-inequalities-push-poor-students-further-behind/395348/

Skim through the article and look closely at the graphs. What do you see?

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/

Build a garden

Food insecurity on campus

We all hear about college students eating ramen noodles and living off of the little money that’s left over from their hefty tuition. But that stereotype is no joke. It’s happening here on our own campus. Many students are hungry, some even homeless.

Many students have to choose between either tuition, rent, and books or food. To make matters worse, the dining halls in the University of Illinois are incredibly expensive. For kids who stay in dorms, this is the meal plan they have for the Academic year:

6 Classic Plan*	$2,160
12 Classic/15 Café Credits Plan	$4,560
10 Classic/45 Café Credits Plan	$5,240
All Café Credits (130) Plan	$5,604
Maximum Classic Plan	$5,604

The numbers represent how many meals a student can have per week. As you can see, it’s quite expensive to eat in the dining halls. So those kids who can’t afford the dining halls should just go to the grocery store, right?

But in the U of I, the only real grocery store on campus is an overpriced County Market located near the edge of campus. If kids can’t eat in the dining halls and they can’t afford to go to cafes, they have to buy groceries. But if they also can’t afford to go to Country Market and don’t have the time/money to go to Walmart for groceries, what are they supposed to do?

I don’t think adding a garden next to Uni would fix hunger amongst college students. Having a garden by Uni might not even be able to feed a group of twenty people, but I think that it’s worth a shot. This doesn’t have to be a Michelle Obama type garden. Due to practicality, it probably won’t even be that big.

However, I think we should consider starting a garden. Many low SES college students aren’t getting enough food, and when they do eat food, it’s not food that can sustain an intense college curriculum. As we saw in the documentary, Rosie had a lot of trouble focusing in school. To thrive in college, students should have fairly healthy foods to feed their brain. They should also not have the stress of worrying where their next meal is coming from on top of their already stressful schoolwork.

Again, I don’t think making a garden would fix that problem. But if a garden could just help feed one person, I think it’s worth it. Perhaps a garden could even set a precedent for other gardens to pop up in CU.

I think to get to the core of this issue, we need some serious reform. But looking at who our president is, I don’t think that people who need help from the government will be getting that help anytime soon. So though planting a garden won’t get to the crux of hunger in America, it would at least do a little for something who are affected by this overarching problem.

Inauguration rant

January 20, 2017

January 20, 2009 brought us something that many people never thought was possible. Quite frankly, I didn’t think that Obama was going to get elected. Even though I was an eight year old at the time, I already had a pretty strong grasp on what went on in our country. I had this little ruler that I kept in my pencil box of all the 43 presidents. In case you didn’t know, they were all white men. So that’s why when Obama got elected, I was filled with a sense of optimism.

Now I’m trying to hold on to that optimism. Last night I was procrastinating by watching a bunch of Obama videos. I was watching his last press conference and of course he had that little bit where he said something like ‘we will make it out alive’ and ‘I believe in this country’ bit that he has always put in his speeches, but has emphasized even more since the election. After Obama invited Trump to the White House, Obama said in a press conference that he would give support to Trump and provide a peaceful transfer of power. I get that. Obama is- was- the president. He had to say that or else there would’ve been a lot of uproar. But for people who aren’t in those positions of extreme influence, is that really the reaction to this?

I remember reading something that said that the opposite of love is not hate, but it is indifference. And I keep on thinking what if Trump does end up following up with his nasty policies such as deporting many undocumented immigrants, having a Muslim registry, and ensuring law and order (code for mass incarceration) in our inner cities? What happens when Roe v. Wade is overturned and the EPA turns into the Environmental Destruction Agency because Scott Pruitt doesn’t believe climate change is caused by human activity? What happens to the people with preexisting conditions when Obamacare is repealed? What happens to people on food stamps? What happens to people fleeing violence from unstable countries, only to find that in America they are hated by many?

Recently, I was scrolling through Trump’s twitter account and I saw the horrible insult he said about John Lewis, the Civil Rights icon who literally got his skull cracked while he was peacefully protesting. And honestly, I wasn’t surprised. And I wasn’t shocked when Trump refused to condemn the KKK or when he made fun of a disabled reporter.

If Trump follows through with even half of what he had promised, America is going to be a more hateful nation that alienates so many people. I really hope that we won’t become indifferent.