Editors Note:Captain is a poverty, race and gender skolar in family with POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork. She has entered Akkkademia to get the "paper" for her family and community because in our current system jobs and access to resources are tied to the institutional paper trail. This is the beginning of a series about her walk into this fire.
1) I have already been charged for the spring quarter, which happens before finals end.
2) Half of my professors have yet to post their book list for courses I have already been charged for, and book vouchers expire Tuesday.
3) In the book list it does not clearly state whether or not there will even be texts required for the course.
4) The dining commons is not open today and I'm on campus without a kitchen or food.
5) It does not clearly state that the dinning commons are closed today.
6) Financial Aid forgot to send out a lot of the book vouchers.
7) Our library does not carry the majority of books I need for my courses.
8) I will already be behind in my coursework at the start of the quarter because I have some professors who've already assigned work.
9) There is no established protocol for addressing some of these fundamental dysfunctions of the system.
10) Not everyone has money.
11) Not everyone has a home to go to for spring break.
12) You must have exact change to park on campus or even ride the bus.
13) There is no change machine on campus.
14) Buy back offered me $4.00 dollars for all of my books.
15) The gym is open yet it is unhealthy to work out without fuel.
Of course there is more but I must be strategic about my rants as I intend to make the campus functional for all students, not just those who are privileged enough to have parents/family/community support, financial support, a car, bus fare, connections or a reliable network of people in their lives, a spring break, and a process to hold a forum to have their campus grievances heard.
I'm going to need for them to get it together, and I am willing to help with the process. I need for the school just to function. A slim amount of foster youth make it to college, and it does not work practically for us. People don't see the bias toward privilege, but if I can't even convince friends at times of their own privilege, it would be a revolutionary act to ask so of campus systems. I think these and any number of other non-functioning parts of the campus may be related to our campus's low graduation rate - only 47%!!!! I want other students to begin to ask how we can improve this in low tech and low cost ways on our campus. To at least improve the quality of access to education, so that on our level hopefully we'll meet up with others including professors and professionals working to improve the quality of our education.
This quarter my wellness and stability largely has been learning how to depend on others despite my thoughts that I can do everything. Accepting help has been the most rewarding in that I get to pass on the love that has been shown to me, and when I do I ask those to pass it on to another. I don't know if that qualifies as a movement, or karma, or just being vulnerable, but I try to give out some of my positive wellness.