Massive budget cuts and new class schedules over the past few weeks have kept the DVC administration busy, and several “extra-curricular” courses are suffering for it.

Many students would agree that the cuts need to stop, and continued budget cuts look like they will affect future transfer rates.

Engineering, for example, bolsters the highest transfer rate of any other major at DVC, and with the new budget cuts for the 2011-2012 school year, it could be wiped out altogether.

The enrollment of international students, who net into the school over $1 million annually to take courses such as engineering, could steadily decline or even enroll at other schools altogether.

Community college is not about what can be cut, but what can be offered.

Opportunity is found to be essential in our educational system, as clearly reflected in DVC’s mission statement: “DVC is passionately committed to student learning through the intellectual, scientific, artistic, psychological, and ethical development of its diverse student body”.

DVC’s administration seems to be more adamantly committed to cutting classes in the arts, engineering, biology and physical recreation department than preserving or expanding them.

DVC’s administration, while removing whole courses from the class roster, has removed the process to cut these classes all together. No evaluation. No grading process. Not even the faculty senate was given time to advise on this major academic change.

In a recent Faculty Senate meeting on Feb. 1st, discussed how prerequisite and placement courses, which originally helped fulfill degree and certificate requirements, are being cut.

A joint cut across all classes was proposed at the following faculty senate meeting last Tuesday.

The faculty agreed that a 3 percent cut from all departments and the creation of a new scheduling task force could help alleviate the situation the administration has put the student body in.

The new commission which would include Integration Council members, a united faculty rep. and a member of academic management would give teachers the representation in scheduling and budget meetings that, until recently ignored by the administration, is entitled to them by article 10+1 of the California Education Code.

In joining the student body in their struggle with the budget cuts, teachers at DVC are helping guide students and taking a stand against the cuts.

Though the Faculty Senate’s proposed changes should help DVC in the short term, students in the long term will suffer.

Their suffering originates in a core problem within how our school is run.

At its core, DVC should foster a community of opportunity, and in light of financial pressure, that opportunity has diminished in favor of an oppressive form of education.

This system of education is gradually manifesting in the rising class prices and budget cuts, similar in many respects to an accounting process.

This banking form of education, as explained by Paulo Friere, molds students to become “receiving objects” that are unable to “grow or mature” beyond the limits given to them by their educational “banks”.

Our educational banks our bankrupt; as students, we need an alternative.

DVC’s administration has made their position on our school mission clear.

Their budget cuts have caused our student body and our faculty to become divisive on what should be cut; how has now become a topic of debate.

To DVC students, education is not something to be debated nor divided. Education is essential, and what is essential should be made available to everyone.