After some consideration, I must admit I agree with the critics of Students for a Democratic Society's Wednesday protest. We should have done our homework and opened up a thesaurus to see "university" and "corporation" listed side by side as synonyms. I guess we missed a step and forgot that universities are no longer educational institutions, but money-making machines.
After all, as UF President Bernie Machen said to The Gainesville Sun, it's all about the "maximum return," about lining UF's pockets and not preparing students to change the world. Maybe we should admit that we belong to a lost age, to a time when people came to college to expand their minds and not to be counted as capital in the university's bank account. But I for one would rather push on, rather fight the war, sweatshop labor and environmental degradation in the manner most appropriate to my position as a student: by changing the way UF handles its investments and forcing its administration to consider applying the same kinds of ethics it demands from education to its investment portfolio. I want to be able to tell my children and my grandchildren, "I was there," not to give them proof of my long-lost youth or stake a claim at having been cool, but so they hear about a time when the world split open and gave birth to something better, something truly beautiful.
