CSUN Matadors,

Students may think the government is fine and working for their best interests. THIS IS SARCASM: You do not have to find the motivation to work to change anything because we have the new messiah, the man with the plan, Barack “Yes We Can” Obama. I have complete faith in President Obama to do everything that is within his current stockbroker’s power to try to reverse this current situation. However, the real power to control money needs to be within the hands of the people, not the bankers. All politicians in the U.S., especially misguided, opportunistic bodybuilders who have risen to govern California with Conan-the-barbarian tactics, need to be put in their place. Alternatively, if you are a politician, then look in the mirror, and actually find the will, for once, to put your constituents’ interests before your pocketbook. Here is a thought, let us indict the governor, chancellor, and the state treasury for mismanagement of direct funds intended for the quality advancement of our education. If tearing down the new Valley Performing Arts Center means that the professors get their full rate of pay, then so be it. Let us take these decisions out of the hands of corrupt, slimy public officials and into the hands of the people.

President Bush was hell-bent on creating rampant global apathetic capitalism, as well as, pursuing Medieval Crusades plans, a la tactics strategized by power point against “terrorists,” to create the largest economic disaster in world history. This world is too small for both the American lifestyle and the wars in the Middle East to co-exist. So, guess what, or who, is being sacrificed? Why is the price of our education going up while the quality is being necessarily sacrificed? I thought there were think tanks paid millions to avoid illogical quagmires like that last question. Logic would dictate that if the cost of paying people to kill other people were more expensive than the cost of paying people to educate other people than you would stop killing people. However, we are obviously either blind with nationalism or the governor has cut funding to teach logic in school. Therefore, we must resist this insanity for our future’s sake. Do you want yourself, family, and/or friends to come up in a capitalist caste system, hungry, stupid, and sick with swine flu? If we do not unite, march, and bust out our bullhorns on the nation, watch how much gets fixed. Our ancestors fought hard for us not to become mindless, obedient zombies bent over to the will of a government gone awry.

This is the guy behind the guy behind the guy,

Quint Flint

Dear CSUN Matadors,

If you want to achieve change and progress, then we have to do something about it. Pro-active students can schedule walkouts, protest, stand on their deans’ lawns, and demand change with the power of their voice. Where is our voice CSUN? We live in Los Angeles, the world’s largest distribution of popular media. People listen to us, change their culture, anticipate our trends, and live their westernized existence based on understanding the sound that is coming out of our mouth. So, why are our students not speaking up, taking action, or walking out? Are you too distracted? Do you have sex on the brain?

The students seem too lazy, self-conscious, and distracted to care about real topics any more. Let’s talk about frivolous ones like graphic sex columns, baby. It got your attention more than my last letter calling on students mildly to protest by wearing armbands to school. Maybe this will get someone’s attention. I am going to describe an image for you and, dear God; I hope someone complains about this visual.

While watching some show featuring horrifying, shocking reality caught on tape, a clip starts with a clean, professional, and confident matador dressed similarly to our mascot with bright shiny bells on and a bright, red cape twirling around him in the center of a bullfighting ring. After a little dance, he bows, and prepares for the bull with his cape out to the side. When the bull charges, he swings his cape up to get out of the way and prepare for the next charge, but the bull’s horn snags on his cape. The bull goes crazy, whipping its head back and forth trying to get the cape off the horn. Unfortunately, for the matador, the bull swings the snagged horn around, exactly up, and into the matador’s buttocks.

Enraged, the bull is thrashing wildly, dragging, kicking, beating, and stamping on the matador. The bull rips off pieces of his costume, flails our hero about like a rag doll, and essentially bull rapes the matador who barely manages to get away. The saddest part was seeing the battered, tattered, matador crawl off with his bright red cape still stuck up where the sun does not shine. Pathetically crawling away, who continues fighting after having their dignity so literally stripped away from them like that?

This completely horrifying spectacle is a metaphor for our school. We must fight. Imagine if when preparing to accept your diploma on graduation day the dean came charging at you like a bull. If they kick the diploma, you, and your dignity right off the campus with their foot where the bull’s horn had been would you just crawl off and take it, would you? Are we going to let the bull have its awful way with our education or are we going to fight this beast, take out our swords, and kill the bull where it stands. OK, if that metaphor is too violent for say, vegetarians, how effective are vegetarians at actually stopping slaughterhouses from killing cattle by making the commitment not to eat any? It is a start, but ultimately not effective, there has been no change, and it takes more than one person to make a difference. It takes an informed, organized army of voices to shut this plan to slaughter our education down.

So, instead of protesting over graphic sex columns, protest over the graphic reports of abuse and mistreatment the state government is exacting upon the faculty and staff of our hard working academia. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and our pushover chancellor, has built the plumbing to flush the value of our precious education out into the murky, disgusting ocean of despair, destitute, and fear for what is to come after we graduate. Let us wake up, and talk about how it feels when the state government hands us this unacceptable, derelict smut as an excuse for our education system.

Just do it,

Quint Flint