Someone has come up with an idea to shame the State legislature into reconsidering what it is doing with the funding for my State’s fairly modest public university system. For the last few years, while trying to figure out how to, among other things, prohibit teachers from saying the word “medication” during parent-teacher conferences, make abortion a greater social stigma than it is already, mandate Christian worship at government functions, insure that perverts aren’t treated as married couples, authorize special weddings, the legislature has frozen the funding for the State Universities and now proposes to reduce the funding by 40 million dollars. The Regents have already increased tuition by 19% to go into effect this fall. There is talk about limiting enrollment. The university presidents have been howling in their quiet and dignified somewhat tweedy way but they carry no political clout. Students have been howling in their usual whiny manner but no one is paying much attention to them since they are always are bitching about one thing or another and the legislature suspects that an undue exposure to cheap higher education will either cause them to leave the State or move to a city or vote Democrat. In this State the rule of politics is that if the Farm Bureau doesn’t want something to happen it is not going to happen, at least until reapportionment kicks in. Until then State Senators and Representatives from districts that make up no more than 40% of the State’s population control the legislature. This legislature is not going to raise taxes, come hell or high water.
So what’s the bright idea? We are going to have BAKE SALES! We are going to sell $40,000,000 worth of cookies, cakes, pies and breads! Outside the football stadium on game days! The legislature won’t fund the great pubic universities, please buy a half dozen chocolate chips? Of course, since 9/11 you can’t take your cookies into the stadium on the off chance that they are TERRORIST COOKIES!
Bah! It won’t work for three reasons. First, it is unlikely that the faculty committee that thought this up is going to sell 13,333,333 items at $3.00 a pop. Second, and most important, this legislature is impervious to shame. It is shameless. Third, this legislature, and its puppet master, the insurance and finance magnate impersonation a Grange Society, hates the universities as places that educate lawyers, tree-huggers and people who get the hell out of this lame excuse for a State as fast as they can. Will the last person who leaves Iowa please turn out the lights? :mad: