PEL STUDENT NEWSPAPER

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Editorial 11: Knowledge is power. Read up.

What started out as a eight page emergency issue has now ballooned into a 20 page issue which easily could have been 24 or 28 pages. Everybody has an opinion on the strike issue, and hopefully the first issue of The Cadre this year will help sort out some facts and help some learn what's on the table.

What a way to start off a year.

If there were a strike how would it affect you? If you lost two or three weeks of classes, and had to make them up at the end of the year, what could hap- pen. If you're apply to any post-grad pro- gram the deadline for many programs is May 1. If 800 people are applying do you think anyone will care why you're late? No, you're fucked. If you live in the dorms, the English language program moves in during the summer. Get out, you're fucked. We'd be weeks behind get-

ting a summer job, and we'd be losing that pay.

Yet UPEI is no different than a prison, insane asylum, or orphanage. It's an institution; who's purpose is to bring in people, change them for the better, and release them. That's why we're all here; we're not here to stay, we're here to get a degree and get the hell out. Yet while we're here it'd be nice to get a quality education. And for that we need good professors who are working in amicable conditions. Sure they deserve fair and equitable pay on par with other Maritime universities. Yet a retroactive pay-raise and a 1/6 decrease in workload is too much to happen at once. And the province isn't going to up it's allotment to UPEI, and the huge cost will fall on the backs of students.

And the backs of students are

already over-burdened with debt, and our brains are tired of waiting for that day when the bank machine says "insufficient funds." ee ;

For five years I've been getting student loans, which amount to around $5,600 for first semester and $3,600 for second semester. For eight months a year I live off $9,200, and much of that goes to paying for school. Can I really morally support a professor who's starting salary is around $50,000 and who after 12 or 15 years can make over $100,000? And we're in a province with the second low- est cost of living in Canada. When the administration has to ante up the pay- raise for the faculty, I hope it doesn't become a case of taking money from the (dirt) poor and giving it to the (compara- bly) rich.

-Thomas Lloyd

UPEI Cadre January 8, 2004 page 2