classrooms like slums

CSUS, the state college where I work, has been afire with acrimony this semester. Faculty accuse the President (Alexander Gonzalez) of mismanaging the budget and overwhelmingly voted "no confidence" in his direction. The President and many alumni accuse the faculty of being short-sighted and interested only in their own salaries.

As an English lecturer at CSUS, I don't have time to investigate the ins and outs of those claims. But I can illustrate a little of the reason for such low morale and cynicism on campus.

I share one office with four other instructors, all conferencing students simultaneously. We five share one computer, one broken printer and one phone. When we arrive for 7:00 a.m. office hours, our building’s door is often locked. When we bring in a space heater to ease the winter chill, we are chided for unnecessary energy use. When we arrive at our classrooms, we find wires dangling where clocks should be. When there is a clock, it reports its own, unique time of day. When we write on chalkboards, we do so with tiny chalk-stubs and no replacement boxes. When the classrooms have whiteboards, there are no dry-erase pens. When we bring transparencies to class, we find no overhead projector. When students file in for the first day of class, they find broken desks and chairs stacked precariously, artistically, in the front corner of the room, and must lean against the wall or squat on the floor.

I ask my students to judge their education by the quality of our academic dialogue, but they are not fooled. Our classrooms and offices are slums and the landlord isn’t proud enough of what happens here to fix it.