When talking to my peers I started out by asking the hot button question of ‘what do you think about the fee increases’. I found that although the answers varied in severity, the general feeling produced a negative vibe. I inquired about the various emails the chancellor has been sending the student body and people were outraged. “UMass is supposed to generate a sense of pride for not just the students, but for the entire state of Massachusetts” one student said, “I don’t see how they can create that proud feeling state wide if the students are not proud of the school.” As she continued listing reasons as to why UMass has recently taken on the less that dignified position amongst students she mentioned that ‘taking away student organizations and sports teams’ was an ‘unproductive and disloyal way of dealing with the situation’.
Many students whom I have talked to seem confused about the process of the fee increases with regard to what they will be cutting as far as staff, programming and construction for next year. “If you are getting rid of 300 staff members and cutting a number of programs why do you need to raise our fee’s” one of my friends mentioned in conversation. Contrary to that statement I had a conversation with a friend who had a more conservative approach to this situation. She attends Ithaca College in upstate New York and ‘didn’t understand why students at my school were so furious about the $1,500
increase in fees. We have fee increases every year to cover the cost of inflation and no one ever complains’.
What I also found with regard to the fee increase situation, and the overall economic crisis in general was that students did not generally seem to mention the job scarcity issue. In fact many students I talkedto seemed to think that because of this economic crisis and the increase in fees less students would graduate meaning their would be less competition for job placement. On a personal level, I find this sentiment incredibly and unavoidably selfish. If you are lucky enough to afford college, and fortunate enough to graduate than you deserve a good job- but what about the kids who couldn’t afford college but could have been fortunate enough to cure cancer or become a great politician? It seems in our nature to think of ourselves first, our wants second and others last.
Many people argue that the teenage years of a person are the years which they are most impressionable, but for our generation I would like to argue that we are born as inherently impressionable people. When I went though the interview process with most of my friends they started by denying that they were influenced by media, “Cosmo is so bullshit” one friend mentioned. But the further we discussed these media outlets as sources of personality and life she rephrased the sentence to “Cosmo is so bullshit, but don’t get me wrong I love it”. It seems as though my friends, who have all been influenced by the likes of Sut Jhally and other media critics, know that media serves as a poor representation of our generation, but still they play into these depictions a if nothing is wrong.
Could this be from denial, self consciousness perhaps regret. Whatever the case media influences seem to be unavoidable for our generation. One of the most striking things I came across in this interview process was this tendency of being older than your age. “I remember thinking, ‘wow my friends are really young’ and trying to look as old as the people we saw on TV. It seemed as though every episode was a new year and everyone was just getting older and older” said one of my interviewees Grace.
She bought up a very good point- TV shows are portraying their teenage characters using actors who are well above 20, magazines like Seventeen are targeting girls who are 11 and up. As these children continue to grow up at this rapid pace, they are being raped them of any real childhood. Is that fair? I think a great way to show these ‘media perverts’ how detrimental childhood is would be to ask them ‘Would you like your daughter or niece spread on the front page of a #1 magazine in nothing but a blanket?’- because I can assure you Billy Ray Cyrus didn’t, yet that’s where 16 year old [then 15] Mylie Cyrus ended up.
We have made the step of understanding our generations representation in media is unacceptable- but now it is time for us to take action and stop buying into the media that is tearing us down. Think about it- why would you want to buy into a media that represents us poorly, wouldn’t you want to bring the down? We as generation have tremendous power in media because we are their main consumers- if we stop funding them, stop supporting them and top buying into what they have to say, they will be left to their own devices and maybe they will stop exploiting and actually start entertaining.
