Staff editorial: Enough already, protestors. Nobody is listening.

Feb 2, 2010, 12:00 AM

The Board of Regents is not going to move its meeting location to Kane Hall. Tuition is going to go up whether you like it or not. Mark Emmert can take a pay raise if he damn well pleases. And sweatshops are going to continue to exist, regardless of how many angry phone messages you leave with Emmert's secretary. Maybe it's too bad that all of the above are true, and maybe something should be done about it. I'll concede that much. But you know who's not going to get it done? People gathering in Red Square holding picket signs and megaphones, or people storming the UW Tower chanting demands that fall on deaf ears, or those who march into Gerberding Hall intending to give that big ol' mean President Emmert a piece of their mind. Enough already, protestors. Nobody is listening. Standing up for your rights is one thing. The lunch-counter sit-ins in the 1950s and '60s as part of the Civil Rights Movement? Powerful. Meaningful. It sent a message. You holding a picket sign for a couple of hours before you head to your psych lecture and grab a burger at 1101? Um, not so much. The fact is, the school is going to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and your opinion means about as much to President Emmert as mine does to Barack Obama - not a whole heck of a lot. You'd think all of these protests with zero results would have driven that message home by now. I'm not sure if I've ever heard of a more pitiful complaint than that of those students who so forcefully demanded the Board of Regents move their meeting from the UW Tower to Kane Hall. Never mind the fact that these meetings are open to the public and anyone can go. No, apparently UW Tower is just too far of a walk for students who otherwise would just love to attend. If any student is bored enough to get up at 8:30 a.m. to go to a Board of Regents meeting, something tells me the location isn't going to be a deal breaker. And can we come off the whole tuition increase thing? If tuition doesn't go up, the value of your degree suffers, and we dig ourselves an even deeper financial hole. Guess what? The university's budget is getting decimated right now. It needs money. So if you want to still be able to brag about how awesome your degree from the University of Washington is ... you have to pay for it. Deal with it. Just don't do it with a picket sign. Reach Sports and Development Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com or development@dailyuw.com.

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