Truth About Money

The constant refrain from UC President Mark Yudof and the UC Board of Regents-“We’re the messengers,” “We have no money”-must be challenged with great candor and clarity [News, “Massive Tuition Hikes Passed“]. UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang says that the mind-boggling decision to raise undergraduate annual tuition by 32 percent belongs to the regents, who turn right around and claim, “It’s not our fault-talk to the Legislature.” I assume the Legislature and governor will thus turn around and state, “It’s not our fault-talk to the voters who turned down the propositions earlier this year.”

All this posturing-“We simply don’t have the money”-seems incredibly convenient. If that is so, why do we, as a society, have sufficient money for jails and bombs? While the powers that be drone on about shared sacrifice, when is the last time that the budgets for the prison and military-industrial complexes have been cut? Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Every bomb that drops on Vietnam is a bomb that is dropped on our nation’s cities.” It seems to me that we must speak truth to power because, as George Orwell once said, “The truth is revolutionary.” The money is there. We must demand that it be channeled to schools, teachers, workers, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and so on. As someone else once said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” It is time to tell the truth-that’s the message that the messengers should be telling. – Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval