Rebecca Stahl
Staff Writer
The state system and the union faculty failed to reach an agreement surrounding a new contract, and so Millersville began to strike October 19. The support for the college was shown when big crowds of students and teachers alike were lined up along the streets, while cars were passing by honking in support of a new contract.
Students like Dan Morales, 46, senior at Millersville University was standing by his teachers for hours as they protested their right to higher quality education. He is a Marauder who believes that he should stand with his faculty, and help them get a new contract that will benefit the students and faculty alike.
“I don’t want the college to use a bunch of adjunct professors to undermine the full time professors,” said Morales. He believes that the quality of our education is at risk by the PASSHE trying to hire new faculty, “as cheap as possible” thereby sacrificing quality.
There has been a lot of talk at Millersville in the last weeks about the strike. The controversy surrounding the campus has envoked many debates, and many students seem to believe that it is harming their education rather than helping it.
Morales doesn’t agree with this sentiment, he said. “[It will help] in the long run it because you can’t let the penny pushers decide everything. If you go too cheap, you lose quality.”
This loss of quality will greatly cost students the value of their education.
Students who are against this strike have mounting fears about how it will affect their finances at Millersville University. The college is not “gonna make anything cheaper for the students by doing this,” Morales stated, which has been a growing concern among the student population.
Students are paying an enormous amount to get a good, quality education, and are afraid that they are wasting their money while their teachers go on strike.
Morales said that they should do more research if they truly believe the strike is absurd because “most students’ don’t know that the professors have been working for the past 400 days with no contract.”
If the students were better informed about all of the different areas of the strike, they would be better inclined to participate in supporting their teachers and faculty at Millersville, Morales said.
