Student reactions

By Brian Maxey | November 4, 2009

Print Print
Check out our new classifieds page! Post classifieds
 

Opinions about Tuesday’s meeting vary among students, faculty who participated

President John D. Welty met with student representatives Tuesday afternoon in an open 
forum debate held in the Peace Garden at California State University, Fresno.

At the meeting, a follow-up gathering to the student walkout staged two weeks ago, Welty responded to a list of demands and fielded questions from students for nearly two hours.


The reactions to Welty and the list of the demands varied, with some attendees arguing that the university president brushed off the demands and danced around the issues. 
Others thought Welty had been the target of misplaced blame.


Freshman Daniel Andersen, 18, felt Welty was being wrongly blamed for many of the 
students’ frustrations.


“I feel like a lot of these students are advocating for what they believe in, but a lot of it is 
frustration with the wrong person,” Andersen said. “It’s not Dr. Welty’s fault, he had two bad 
choices, either furlough or cut classes — it’s like picking the lesser of two evils.”


Nate Chang, an undeclared freshman, said that he supported Welty and that student 
expectations of Welty were too high.


“I paid more for high school than I do for college,” Chang said. “I have a job and I pay for my 
education.”


Sat Vir, a student who participated in the debate, disagreed. 


“[Welty] answered in a way that you’d expect a politician to answer,” Vir said.


However, he said that Welty’s direct response to the AB 656 proposal was a bright spot 
during the debate. Still he feels that many of Welty’s answers skirted the issue.


“He kept repeating things we told him. He didn’t have reasoning behind it. He had no facts, 
documents and statements,” Vir said. “Some of the statements he made weren’t accurate. 
Unless you’re a top-level accountant, you can only speculate as to where our 
money is being spent.” 


Welty, who said that he would not take the pay cut some students lobbied for, agreed in principle to several of the 
demands proposed by students including a “study in” that he offered to host at his home.

Josh Cranston, 27, a member of the Walkout Coalition said that he would be at Welty’s home on this Saturday at 6 p.m.


“Students have just getting screwed over. I just want to see that we get some power,” Cranston said.

Related Content

Views expressed in the comments section are not representative of The Collegian unless so specified. Comments must be approved by a moderator before they are published. Comments that are inflammatory, profane, libelous and/or posted under a false name may be removed at the discretion of The Collegian. Comments may be used in the print edition of the newspaper. Be sure to pick up next Friday’s issue of The Collegian for featured comments.

Comments

  • just saying...
    "Che,"did you even read the whole article? They asked two freshmen too whose opinions are before the others in the article. Stop having selective reading.
  • Garth Clifton
    seniors who used the forum as a method to further a political ideology instead of find real solutions to real problems.
  • Che
    They were seniors. They apparently have a much larger grasp of what is going on than you do. How old do they have to be?
  • just saying...
    It might've been better if you asked a majority of older students who have experienced college for more than a few months what they thought instead of asking two freshman right out of high school with probably no real idea about a majority of what is going on.
blog comments powered by Disqus