Just Plain Mater

When I graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor's of Science in 1971, my parents wanted to give me a Lifetime Membership in the Alumni Society as a graduation present. They were too cheap to pay the whole $100, but they chipped in $50 and I paid the rest. I'm an official card-carrying U Dub Alumnus! I get mail from the Alumni Society all the time! I get a glossy magazine! They want me to give the University more money, to make it a greater University than it already is!

Let me explain why I won't.

First, there was this little dispute that arose in the 80s when I was painfully homeless. Getting over the worst of an onset of PTSD, I tried to get back into my math career by using the Math Research Library at Padelford Hall. No, not to sleep there. I went in just to look for books and check them out. Then, I returned them on time! Those days I still respected libraries, and returned books. I'm wiser now.

The librarian didn't respect me. She said, "The books are for people who need them." I said I needed them. The librarian indicated my need didn't count. I flashed the Lifetime Membership card. My need still didn't count. I asked one of my former professors to intervene on my behalf, a guy who had given me a glowing recommendation that helped me get into a graduate school. He denied ever having known me before even one cock crowed. He probably thought, "Did I have any homeless in my classes? Let's see, I had an Armenian. I had a Nigerian. I had a Hoosier. But no, no homeless."

OK. That sort of thing can leave a bad taste. But I'm an easy-going, forgiving, SOB. Yes I am. I have been willing to forgive and forget that slight. I don't know, maybe that librarian was acting out of line. Maybe I didn't complain to the right person, the one who would have set her straight.

Recently the University pressured Gregoire to go along with booting rehabilitating sex offenders out of the fraternity neighborhood, ostensibly to protect students from possibly in the future feeling uncomfortable about them being there. Turns out the University really wants to expand into the property the sex offenders were housed in.

The University should now be barred from doing so for a generation, until the stench of its corruption has had time to dissipate. But if that were the worst of the University's crimes I'd be saving every penny I found in the gutters and every dime I find under every vending machine for my beloved college.

There is one unforgivable injustice.

In 1967 I paid $345 per year for state-resident tuition. Since then, average tuitions for residents have gone to around $6,500 per year. In 40 years we've had six-fold inflation overall, but over 18-fold inflation of UW tuition!

At the same time there has been only a little more than a nominal 4-fold increase in workers' pay, two-thirds the inflation increase. Consequently the economic burden on low-income working residents is 4 and a half times what it was when I was a student.

Poor people are being gouged on a steady ongoing basis. They may get loans, but they are having to spend lifetimes paying them back. It's the new slavery. An indentured servitude of decades instead of the traditional seven years. And what do the Board of Regents and the President talk to Gregoire about? Getting sex offenders out of a building they want.

I'll give them the same deal my parents gave me. If the University's governors make a good faith effort to get the state to bring tuitions down to around $2000 a year, I'll think that they really do care about their mission after all, and I'll make an effort to scrounge up $50 for them.

Until then, the University of Washington will get from me what I got from them when I was homeless.