Dearest First Communiqué

I’m writing to question the motives in your ongoing “occupation” of empty school buildings at night. I will use the press release drafted as “First Communiqué” as evidence.

The purpose of higher education is not, as you claim, “to perpetuate the existent order of society.”

Any university that supports research directly affects innovation, which leads to more jobs and a better standard of living for everyone.

Do you think those speakers you used in the School of Fine Arts Room 015 during your dance party protest were developed in People’s Park?

To deny that higher education does not increase the well-being of society through innovation is a baseless and stupid claim.

You assume people who lack wealth are not able to obtain higher education, when there is substantial direct evidence against this.

The Institute of Education Sciences found that college enrollment has increased 45 percent for full time students in the United States from 1999 to 2009.

Indiana University alone has seen a 9.5-percent increase in enrollment from 1999 to 2006, while becoming more selective in admission standards and increasing scholarship offerings.

Not to mention federal subsidized loan programs, pell grants, increases in minority scholarships and countless other sources of aid for less than wealthy students.

Your choice to label higher education learners as “passive” by blaming the establishment takes away every student’s agency over their choice to innovate by using their education.

Claiming that students are trained to become “obedient consumers in order to perpetuate the existing order” not only denies our ability to innovate but also the correlation between education and innovation itself.

The tools and abilities required to become innovative and productive beyond school are gained at places like IU!

At that point you are right about something: 18- to 22-year-old undergraduates are not the most innovative individuals.

Undergraduates definitely did not discover the double helix (IU’s James Watson), conduct groundbreaking research (IU’s Alfred Kinsey) or become regarded as the best violinist alive (IU’s Joshua Bell). I bet they spent some time working with the tools they gained during their time as students to innovate, but I digress.
 
You chose to come to IU, for whatever reason (obviously not to learn how to become more productive, to signal anything of relevance to future employers or to increase your ability).

If you don’t believe places of higher education help increase your ability to innovate, you are more than welcome to leave. 

Data suggests that people with high academic ability (which isn’t perfectly correlated to wealth) are able to attend places of higher education, while those who don’t tend not to.

If you can’t afford school and you don’t have the ability to receive funding, are you just desperately signaling that you are something you aren’t?

­— Chris Grosvenor,
cgrosven@indiana.edu