Higher education seems to have lost the passion for organizing

(Image by Ricardo Levins Morales)

The institutional establishment has too much control over higher education. There is a profound disconnect, in my view, between those who benefit and need access to opportunity in higher education and those who run the show.

Here’s my view from the back bench:

I’m new to the Legislature. I don’t know how it worked in previous years other than the fact that my predecessor, former Rep. Helen Sommers, as chair of the Appropriations Committee quietly and powerfully made magic things happen for higher education for decades. Her ability to pull an anti-higher education budget out of the circular file was legendary. She is gracefully and deservedly retired in Magnolia after 36 years of service to the people of the 36th District. It goes without saying that despite my passion for higher education I am not even a poor substitute, or in the same league in any fashion, when it comes to her ability to save higher education from the budget ax. Yet it’s much more than that for the Legislature and institutions alike. Perhaps, just perhaps, she shielded higher education from the painful reality of the need to organize like Hell for your own future. Perhaps she was, indirectly and in a strange way, a market distortion of sorts and now higher education needs to catch up. And fast.

In the 2009 legislative session higher education was really, truly slammed hard in the budget. It took an ugly and painful fall because: a) it’s not protected constitutionally, b) it’s easier for higher ed to absorb cuts than many other arenas, c) there is a growing sense that we might need to change our model of funding and operating now that tuition accounts for more revenue for institutions than state support, d) perceptions continue about whether the institutions have done enough to ‘own’ the challenge of making bold system efficiencies and reforms, e), etc., etc. Actually I don’t really know why it took the fall so I’m just listing out some theories. But take the fall it did.

The deeper issue is that the two and four year institutions of higher education in Washington need to wake up to the notion that we live a time of community organizing. The political strategy of the two and four year institutions is still driven primarily by the professionals. That means the Olympia and other insiders who know the inside game. And that’s important. But it misses the richness of the constituency on a broader systems level. It misses the spirit of energy of those who benefit the most. It misses the end user, the customer, the ultimate beneficiary…the most essential voices of the community are virtually invisible and missing from the dialogue.

With an extraordinary community organizer in The White House and another one as Speaker of the state House of Representatives, it’s essential to embrace a new approach to activism. One that is based upon turning out students, alumni, faculty, non instructional staff, TAs and everyone else to be champions and owners–with heart, soul and passion–to advocate for the elegance of higher education itself. Simply, higher education needs to become driven by community organizers not only on the issue of tuition (the only time we see students!) but everything else as well. And then some. I was shocked, literally shocked, when the budget came and went and hardly a sound was heard from the University of Washington, Washington State University, Evergreen State College (right down the road for goodness sake) and even the community colleges other than the regular lobbyists (including our student lobbyists) and college presidents. Some well connected trustees came in. But it was still the inside strategy. Aside from one rocking rally of 300 or so Tacoma Community College students demanding more investment in their system, the literal and figurative silence was painful. A large group of students from UW came to see us and advocate for lower tuition but no one else came to really push, prod and agitate in defense of the need to invest as a state in our higher education system. It jolted me. I kept thinking to myself that I was missing something. What I ultimately realized is what I was missing was hard core, front line, active, respectful but forceful, direct community organizing.

I couldn’t turn around during the Legislative session without running into a purple SEIU shirt of a constituent from the 36th District wanting to talk with me in the halls about health care, nursing, child care and other SEIU causes. When I voted with them, they rallied and let me know. When I voted against them, they rallied and let me know that, too. Is their pathway more effective? That’s hard to know. But it would be a mistake for the institutions of higher education to forgot how to use those tools and to retreat to the age old insider game. You need both tools, of course, and you want to be both at the insider table and the outside steps. Higher education has lost its foothold and the spirit of the steps.

And thus, my number one recommendation to the institutions of higher education–both public and private, two and four year–is to engage on a much more meaningful front line level of activism and community organizing. The system has become old fashioned and is missing the gene of activism that could be the hallmark of an engaged community. Alumni, students, parents, business leaders, labor and everyone else needs to be aligned on the mission of being activists for more than short term tuition rates and football (meaning we received hundreds of emails complaining about the cancellation of football at Western Washington University).

I’m not pretending that sending 1,000 students to Olympia each budget session is the answer or that it will rewrite budgets. My colleagues will kill me. But it might be and it sure wouldn’t hurt. I’m not saying that sending thousands of emails from alumni to legislators is the answer. My colleagues will kill me. But it might be and it sure wouldn’t hurt. You can send your college presidents to Olympia and to private meetings with legislators, and that has value, but change the paradigm and engage your community in more meaningful ways to own the hard work of organizing.

There are thousands of students, thousands of instructors, thousands of support staff and administrators. Now is the time–politically, philosophically and more–for them to come to the aid of the power and passion of higher education as a driver of an engaged society. The K-12 education reform advocates–led in large part by volunteer parent advocates– turned out hundreds at rallies, emails, calls and personal visits at the very moment that House Bill 2261 was in trouble. It helped turn around the legislation. Is this the answer all the time? Of course not. Yet it creates a culture of expectation that community organizing is part of the DNA of higher education. Today, it is not.

Of course, it’s more than Olympia. I find it amazing that the two candidates for mayor, Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan, have yet to embrace or even grapple with the fundamental role of higher education in Seattle as the gasoline of our economic engine. The economic impact of the University of Washington alone is greater than any other single source of economic activity and yet the former makes not a mention of it and the latter includes one modest sentence. And that’s to say nothing of Seattle Central Community College and the other public and private institutions in the city that are part of the lifeblood of our economic health and job recovery.

In the end, of course, sending hundreds of students, alumni, faculty and others to Olympia for every major budget hearing might give you a shot. It might not. But I promise that it will cause folks in the Legislature to reflect more deeply about the depth of the constituency of higher education as a cause greater than one organization. Figures like Bill Gates, Sr. Governor Dan Evans, Gerald Grinstein, business leaders, labor and others can open the insider door and engage in meaningful dialogues about the value, role and spirit of higher education. They carry so much moral authority they are heard on many levels and deeply respected and effective. But in an age of community organizing even they can’t do it alone anymore.

We need a parallel strategy of inside and outside working together to motivate and inspire the sort of passion in our state (not just among legislators) for higher education that is missing.

More than any one tactic, this is about encouraging a paradigm shift to supplement the inside game with the outside mission. From the usual players to the passionate students. From suits to cut off shorts and tee shirts. From reports to home made signs. From the status quo to a newfound sense of activism that higher education is worth investing in not for short term gain but long term vision.

I don’t offer this to criticize anyone individually or even institutionally, of course. My suggestion comes from the back bench of the Legislature because I think we are so much more as a community of people who value and treasure higher education than what has been asked of us.

The political transformation of higher education is not only about technology, tuition, state budgets, tenure and other traditional issues. It’s about building a sense of conviction from the stakeholders across our state that this is a cause worth fighting for. It’s about taking a stand for this cause as more than a department down the hall. It’s about a movement. It’s about change.

Yes we can.