It's Academic

As the media and twittericans slobbered all over themselves to howl platitudes about the recent university strike, I said it was all about money and nothing but money.

Crickets.

Not the first time; won't be the last. Then the strike ended and the ONLY "tangible" result of the "historic" accord--if "historic" is now a synonym for "useless"--was that the new student fee would be imposed on or after January 2011. As for the rest of the accord, it amounted to chalk on toilet paper...as subsequent events are proving, what with changes to the University System Board and more restrictive legislation snaking its way through the sewage system We erringly call the legislature.

Therefore, the strike, the "historic challenge in defense of free thinking" in the words of one so-called pundit basically boiled down to some students saying "We want more money for Our freeloading" and university leaders saying "We need more money for Our freeloading."

Today the University of Puerto Rico president José R. De La Torre issued a press release stating that the university system had lost about $200 million in federal student aid funds, according to a federal Department of Education letter, because of the "interruption of academic offerings unrelated to normal vacation periods or natural disasters."

Tee. Hee.

Joey the Bad News Bear blamed the students for the interruption and that "they had been warned this could happen." He also stated that the UPR had appointed a team to "lead the titanic effort to reapply and restore these funds" to the system.

Titanic. He actually said "titanic." Gotta change the nickname now...

Now Captain Joey the Kangaroo, helming the U.P.R. Titanic, thought he was bitch-slapping the strikers and anti-university naysayers, but he ended up getting bitch-slapped and branded a full-fledged liar when the aforementioned letter was produced.

I'll save you the trouble of reading it: All it says is that the UPR needs to reapply for the funding programs. That's it. No lowering the boom. No death sentence. There's even an offer from the DE to help the UPR complete its individual campus-based applications.

Now unless Joey the Dumb Kangaroo is incapable of reading English, then the only explanation is that he deliberately set out to lie about this issue and he was backed by the political wing of the university system Board (pretty much all of it) in broadcasting the lie. To what effect? To hammer home the point that this whole deal is about money. 

Not academics. Not educational freedom. Not about social progress. It's all about money. Pure and simple.

The hyenas are feeding and the students with their idiotic strike were nothing more than crows cawing above a carcass. They settled for pecking a flaccid sliver from the carcass...instead of plucking the eyes and smashing the heads of the bigger hyenas feasting on the remains of a proud university system.

That's what you get when you're young and can only see as far as your pocket and the next Happy Hour: stupidity. But sadly, in this case it spreads far beyond the ivy-covered walls of academia to encompass the entire Island.


The Jenius Has Spoken.