The bridge gets harder to cross

Today, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed what he's already threatened; cuts in education and health care for the poor.

I consider it a great source of pride to have the leader of our student government treat me and my assistants with disrespect. It lets me know that we’ve touched a sore spot.

We ripped the scab off the wound with our scathing editorial addressing our Associated Students, Inc. silence during the announcement of this current budget crisis at the Cal State University Board of Trustees meeting. Simply put, Cal State Long Beach's ASI was a no show, even though they had the closest proximity.

ASI reps from Chico, Stanislaus, San Diego and other CSUs made the trip and voiced their objections, but our ASI apparently couldn't find its own backyard.

It was their responsibility, not only to their constituents at The Beach, but for students throughout the state. After all, the most controversial item on the agenda was Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts to the CSU and University of California systems.

My assistant editor, Simon Barta, made multiple conscientious attempts to elicit comments from ASI President Mark Andrews. These attempts went ignored. Barta was trying to get the most accurate information available.

What amounts to even less than "no comment" was the best he received from Andrews. I surmised Barta, a fellow student, must not be at the right frat party to be deemed worthy of common courtesy.

I wonder how many other CSULB students Andrews ignores or treats with disrespect. My recent guess is approximately 34,000. If I gambled I'd start an office pool.

Not one returned phone call or e-mail from a student-funded BlackBerry; another situation when ASI felt they owed nothing in the way of explanation to our student body.

Rather than issuing a statement to the Daily Forty-Niner, Andrews chose to publish an opinion piece in the Union newspaper, assailing our editorials supporting community college students and chastising ASI's lack of involvement in the budget emergency.

That’s like a supermarket reader writing to the Penny Saver about an opinion they read in The New York Times. My advice would be to write to the original publication.

To do otherwise means the author's convictions carry an unwieldy stench of cowardice. It reduces his/her commentary to mere back door sniping, but I suppose that's par for the course with this ASI.

As if to validate his middle-school, popularity contest "right to office," Andrews relayed a third-person message to me through Super Fan Jo-Ryan Salazar that I was a “whiner” and the Daily Forty-Niner is nothing more than a “tabloid.”

That’s the typical name calling and childishness we’ve grown accustomed to at our “tabloid” from many in our student government. It seems as if most mumbled when they took their oaths of office.

I claim ownership for being “whiny” on behalf of 35,000-plus students. Our elected leaders aren’t doing it.

If anything screams for student representation (insert whining here), it should be about the 10 percent cuts to the CSU being passed along to students in the form of tuition increases well into the next decade.

The presidents of our university and our student government (insert tabloid-like scandal here) should be leading the charge to protect one of the largest high school graduating classes in California history.

With forced admission caps already in place, large numbers of these high school grads will be deprived of access to our university.

They should be speaking in public for thousands of community college transfer students (insert more whining) who have been busting their humps the past few years to get here, only to be denied when they think their time has finally arrived to cross the university bridge.

Not only is Schwarzenegger’s plan to heap another burden on the backs of public education, it’s a direct violation of the guaranteed growth funding promised in the Higher Education Compact that CSU Chancellor Charles, UC President Dynes and the Educ-Hater illegitimately signed in 2004.

Why wouldn’t our elected representatives take a proactive stand by voicing our concerns? They are ASI, right? I'm also a CSULB student, so "I am ASI," right? Somewhere in the ASI title is “associated” and somewhere else is “students.”

But the part of the political nomenclature our reps are focused on is the “Inc.” Much like the old mafia group, Murder, Inc., our student leaders seem incapable of making important decisions on their own. They simply wait for a contract hit from some capo di tutti capo.

They prefer, it seems, to wait until the university president, the Board of Trustees, or the California State Student Association tells them how to group think. Rather than taking seriously their responsibilities (insert loud guffaw laughter) and spiriting the lead, our ASI takes orders.

ASI will invariably take a retro tail-between-the-legs stance against the tuition increases. They will probably try to appear as leaders (I can't wait to say "I told y'all so") by endorsing or initiating a signature collecting campaign to freeze tuitions, ahem.

The problem is, though, that this student-led initiative has been in the pipeline for several months and is picking up steam while our ASI awaits a command. This despite the fact that Students and Families for Tuition Relief Now posted our "whiny, tabloid" articles on this topic in November.

While our ASI might plan on making a grandiose announcement of their objection to this wallet attack in a week or so, more than 430,000 signatures are needed by mid-April to get the initiative on the ballot.

Consider that need with the availability of approximately 450,000 currently enrolled student signatures in the CSU system, and it becomes a mathematical urgency to start earlier. But our ASI needs to be safely led by their collective noses to represent us.

Many political pundits have suggested the only way Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain can win the election is if we have another tragic event like 9/11.

A similar metaphor could probably be applied to our current ASI leadership, which is likely saving their group announcement to “lead” us against tuition increases in anticipation of upcoming spring elections — or spring re-elections for some. With crisis comes opportunity.

It’s in the best interest of students at CSULB to reject any false springtime campaign claim that so-and-so led the way in a fight to freeze tuitions. That would be like them professing they put the fragrance in spring flowers. Waiting for permission to be an activist is following, not leading.

When Andrews and ASI finally take a position, it will be that of reactionary, self-serving spectators; not as true leaders. Pity.