Juan Blanco, TCCS ’19
As I stood at the beautiful and luxurious room on the 32nd floor of 1 Beacon at the heart of downtown Boston and looked at the UMass logo on the bottled waters on each of the trustees chairs I could not help but wonder: How much money do we use a year on bottled water labels?
A group of students, staff, faculty and community members attended the UMass Board of Trustees Administration and Finance meeting this morning. The goal was to get the Board to vote on approving the use of 5 million dollars from their approximately 96 million dollars of unrestricted central funds to be used at UMass Boston to alleviate the budgetary crisis that is plaguing this institution and buy more time to find alternative means of closing this budget gap without the current “fix” of austerity, layoffs and attacks to our academic core.
These alternatives already exist, measures such as the fair share amendment (which the board has yet to publicly endorse, and which the Massachusetts High Technology Council where UMass president Marty Meehan sits on the board of has sued to keep it away from voters), the proposed use of the Bayside property, as well as the legislative push against state underfunding, can be what keep this university moving forward without destroying its mission.
Members of the UMB community are being made to pay for the sins of those that came before them, with the mismanagement of funds cited by the Board of Trustees being the cause of all that ails us. However, if one is to look at the history of this institution, this is clearly a 40-year problem.
Part of the construction that has gotten us in this hole is directly caused by the shoddy and illegal practices that the Board of Trustees approved back in the 1970s that not only left us with crumbling foundations but also with two state senators in prison on corruption charges related to the selection of the contractor. Now our substructure is quite literally falling to pieces, so much so that firetrucks are not recommended on top of it if a fire were to break out.
Here at UMass Boston, we are a very unique institution.
More than half of our student population are first generation students. More than half of our student population are also people of color. A great number of our students, including myself, are non-traditional students and hold jobs, raise families, and create change in their communities while at the same time balancing their studies.
This institution plays a very important role in a system of higher education that has consistently kept education away from those who have wanted it most and our urban mission becomes closer and closer to mere rhetoric as each day passes.
As Maddie Walker, an undergraduate student and president of the UMB chapter of PHENOM (the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts) and I shared out stories with the board, the press and everyone else in the room; our brothers, sisters and cousins marched the streets with signs, chants and ferocity letting our community know about the injustices that are happening in their only 4-year public research university in the city.
The board did not answer our question, but hopefully our community will answer for them and demand that this institution serve the people it was built to serve. To quote our mission statement: “In providing a supportive environment for the academic and social development of a broad array of students of all ages who represent many national and cultural origins, we seek to serve as a model for inclusive community-building”.
If our classes continue to get bigger, our staff cut, and our funding opportunities disappear, what will this university look like in 2, 5, 10 years? Where will non-traditional students like myself get an education? If things remain the way they’re going, those questions pose bleak answers. But hey, let’s not worry too much folks…at least we’ll still have the UMass logo on the bottled water.
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Please see the following report created by faculty, staff and students that explains what is happening at UMB:
http://fsu.umb.edu/sites/fsu.
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