When one thinks about hunger strikes, the images that come to mind include oppressed minorities fighting against imperial cruelty, like Mohandas Gandhi rallying his Indian peers against the ravages of the British Government.
Then there are those religious dissidents who oppose the unjust use of military force, or political prisoners who protest their unjust incarceration by refusing to eat.
Not once would anyone consider tuition hikes and course reductions in the California State University system as cause for mounting a hunger strike. Yet a tiny group of outraged, yet apparently undedicated students are doing just that.
Decrying the 318% rise in tuition, committed students have promised to "fast until it hurts", arguing that someone must do "something" " 'cause someone's gotta make a change. They have to meet our demands."
Who this elusive antecedent "they" refers to remains a matter of speculation. Like the Occupy Movements of the past year and the vocal public sector union rallies in Wisconsin, collective action is running up against the well-entrenched and unmovable realities of declining state revenues and enraged and overcharged taxpayers. They are struggling to pay their mortgages and keep their jobs, so without question they are challenging the subsidy of underwhelming and unsupportable state programs that guarantee less return on their forced investment.
I find the starving students' tugging at the hear-strings of cash-strapped bureaucracies both sad and amusing. Since when did the skyrocketing rise in tuition ever exist on par with persecuted minorities and men and women of conscience? Youth on our college campuses today allege that every shock or attack on their entitled sense of comfort is an injustice which merits taking up massive protest or turning every challenge into a moral cause. This lack of moral clarity among post-secondary students today is indicative of a failed academic elitism. Like-minded and socially isolated instructors have propped up their students' socialism and idealized liberalism at the expense of economic scarcity and political reality, both of which are the true causes for tuition hikes, and neither of which will be altered because a couple of students have decided to forgo their late-night snacks.
The laughable dedication of a crowd, or more accurately this band of students, is hardly becoming of a serious protest movement. "I'll go until I am seriously ill," one student promised. "Illness" as defined by death or a seizing case of the munchies, we cannot tell.
One professor, a poster-child for this pathetic — and bathetic — adolescent exuberance, remarked:
"These students are putting their bodies on the line for their education. You don't have to be a martyr, an activist, to do something in your everyday lives."
Martyrs indeed:
"Right now, I'm getting kind of sick," commented one hunger-striking student. "I'm willing to do it until my body says I can't do it anymore. . .I am not doing this in vain."
Confusing his jejune enthusiasm with the Apostle Paul's appreciation of God's grace, the student cited above inadvertenly exposes the ludicrous and unfounded reasons for starting a hunger strike in the first place. The diminished return on college degrees, coupled with spiraling student loan debt, decreased job opportunities, and unintelligent intellects hyping their myopic world-view, should be enough to discourage the new generation of students from initiating an abortive foray into higher education. If one must starve, one should at least starve knowing that he or she will not have to discharge a massive debt to the state for a degree that no longer guarantees employment in today's weak and anemic job market.