Could college tuition make 25-candidate campaign instead nothing more than a Warren/Sanders brawl?

We’re up to 25 people with delusions that they’re the one capable of running for president as the Democratic Party’s nominee, with most would-be voters dreaming that everybody else is going to come to their senses and drop out – rather than run against their preferred candidate.

SANDERS: Writing off student loans

But just will be the factor that causes many of these political dreamers to “give it up” to take the advice of comedian Samantha Bee and run instead for the U.S. Senate – instead of for the post that offers up a mansion and private airplane as being amongst its perks?

A PART OF me wonders if Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – the senators from Vermont and Massachusetts, respectively – have latched onto the idea that will sway would-be Democratic voters into making this a two-way campaign between them.

While pushing everybody else off to the political sidelines.

For Sanders and Warren are the two who have tried most to make an issue out of a college education becoming more affordable.

Warren has talked about tuition being free at public colleges. While Sanders is now going further in talking about wanting to erase the debt that students incurred in taking out the loans that helped pay their tuition bills.

HIS LINE OF logic is that it benefits no one – and actually defeats the purpose of a better-educated society – if students are perpetually in debt upon graduation.

WARREN: Tuition-free public education?

Writing off all those unpaid loan bills would benefit the students, and actually result in less time being wasted by entities that are trying to collect debts from people who, realistically, can’t afford it.

Personally, I’m not swayed by the idea – largely because I remember back some three decades ago when I was a freshly-graduated university-type scholar.

I managed to repay my loans in full – even though I also made what I’m sure some (such as my father) would regard as the asinine decision to want to be a newspaper reporter. Not exactly the highest-paid of professions we have in our society. 

FURTHERMORE, I SPENT those early-reporter years with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago – a place that actually took a certain amount of pride in the low wages they paid (my memory recalls starting at $190 a week – which dropped down to $156 weekly once taxes were deducted).

O'ROURKE: Can we write-off Beto yet?

Yes, if I hadn’t had to make that monthly loan payment, I’d have had a few extra bucks. But I did make it. And also have to admit it helped that at exactly the point in time I was finished off with the loans – my future employer gave me a significant pay boost.

Which became the point in time when I could start living a more-adult lifestyle. Maybe I could have had a financially-easier time of it had I made other choices, but those were choices I made -- and I paid the cost, without expecting a financial write-off someday.

Now part of the problem, as I comprehend it, is that college costs are significantly-higher now than they were back in the Age of Reagan. When I look at the costs of college that exist now, I wonder if it would be possible to borrow so much money to afford the tab.

BUT A LARGER part of the problem lies in part with those students who, for whatever reason, wind up not completing college – but took out loans to pay for the years they attended.

BEE: Run for Senate, instead

They’re whacked with significant debt without the potential future earnings that a degree would offer them. Note I said “potential.” There’s no guarantee – as it’s usually only the most promising of students who actually wind up employed to the standard of their dreams.

So I expect Sanders will encounter some opposition from those who think “we paid off our loans, let the deadbeats do theirs.” But there also will be others who will think the theory of “free college” outweighs all others, and will be more than willing to ignore all other would-be presidential candidates just because of it.

So maybe it’s beneficial that the number of presidential dreamers on the Democratic side be reduced. Although I can’t help but be dismayed at the notion that it could be something as trivial as this that causes the ranks to be reduced to a more-comprehendible number.

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Should we tell the modern-day students to “stifle” with their complaints?

College kids don't protest like they used to (sometimes)

I’m a generation or so away from being a college student, so it shouldn’t be shocking to learn that I’m not in line with the modern-day student.

But those students who are complaining too much about how someone is bothering their sensibilities make me want to let loose the “Archie Bunker” that exists in my personality (and that of all of us, to be honest) and say to them, “Stifle!”

THE IDEA OF students creating “safe places” where people who aren’t in agreement with them are not permitted just seems a tad bit ridiculous.

Because when I was in college some three decades ago, the idea was that this was an ugly society we lived in with people who could be hostile toward us. The knowledge we were gaining was supposedly to help us to cope with this opposition.

Gaining knowledge and wisdom would help us put those critics in their place; not teach us to hide from them.

Or, more accurately, to hide those people from us and try to pretend they don’t really exist.

THAT IS WHAT seems to be happening at too many college campuses these days. It may be the way these people wind up preparing themselves to be completely irrelevant to the reality of our society.

Although I wonder if a part of it merely means the whole social media mentality has taken forth. It is too easy for people to create “worlds” for themselves online in which nothing they disagree with ever comes forth.

And for those ideological crackpots out there who are trying to claim this is evidence of some liberal plot to take over society, let’s be honest.

I have no doubt there also are social groups on campus that isolate themselves into thinking that dissent doesn’t exist. Perhaps they even go about pretending that all those non-anglo people walking around campus and behaving as though they were students are really nothing more than an illusion.

EITHER THAT, OR just someone who gets to be on campus to play for the basketball or football teams and ISN’T REALLY one of them!

What makes any of these crackpot students with their safe haven spaces where they can hide from hostility any different than the fraternity house of old?

For my part, I must confess to attending a private university – not some public college filled with people who wouldn’t have been able to be educated otherwise if not for an in-state tuition rate.

My own mid-1980s college memories weren’t filled with tales of activism. I knew some people who were like that, but they were the exception. It was the Reagan years, and I recall the fact that I actually cast a first presidential ballot for Walter Mondale made me the exception!

MANY MORE OF my student colleagues were people who figured they were going to be part of the establishment, were totally content with that image, and liked the idea that college was part of the system that “weeded out” certain undesirables.

Which is what I’m sure many of my college classmates (many of whom I haven’t seen since that spring of ’87 when we graduated and I returned home to Chicago to start being a reporter-type person) would think of the students of today.

It all reminds me of the jokes that used to be told by the faculty back when I was in college – many of them were students of the ‘60s who had their own activist tendencies, then turned out dismayed at how many of us turned out to be the real-life incarnation of Alex Keaton (remember “Family Ties?” Check out METV for reruns).

And makes me wonder how these students will perceive society some three decades from now – when the protests of places such as Mizzou will be looked upon as yet another bit of nonsense that the “old people” insisted on doing in between campus parties!

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EXTRA: Could ruling turn college gridders into student-athletes for real?

I was surprised to learn Wednesday of the National Labor Relations Board ruling that found the current and former football players at Northwestern University weren’t completely delusional in their view that they amounted to university employees who ought to have the chance to organize as a union.

Referring to college sports teams as "football factories" could take on new meaning for the players.

I thought for sure that the status quo would prevail, and that the universities that have major athletic programs (and even many who don’t) would be allowed to pretend that they use “student athletes” to wear their colors when they play sports for the glory of alma mater.

BUT THE LABOR board issued a ruling, that the university is determined to appeal, that ordered an election for the 85 students now on scholarship as part of the Wildcats’ football program.

I don’t believe the athletes playing for college sports teams ought to be in a position where they could be considered as university employees. But the reality is that probably does best describe how they are viewed, and used, by the colleges they attend/work for.

I would gladly hail Wednesday’s ruling as a plus if it meant that universities were to restudy the role of their athletic departments, and if it meant that the way the ballplayers on college teams were treated were to be something more along the line of students who happen to participate in a campus activity.

Instead of the current role for students in the major sports programs such as basketball or football, where some people who wouldn’t even give a thought to attending college go for a year or two because the NCAA programs have essentially become the equivalent of minor leagues for the National Football League or the National Basketball Association.

EVEN IN BASEBALL, the number of professional ballplayers who attended a college is on the rise. But the number who go to play ball in a competitive atmosphere before signing on to play in the minor leagues is also overwhelming.

It makes me wonder how many of them will have any glory moments of college ball, or are just viewing it as part of the preparation for a long-shot career in professional sports.

Which if they make it is one thing. But if they don’t, then it leaves people in a position where they’ll wish they could have got the education they were supposedly getting while they were wearing the university colors.

I do believe that many universities would alter their policies in terms of athlete treatment and restore them back to something respecting the “student” part of the equation, if it meant they could avoid having to recognize the idea of collegiate student labor unions.

SO WHAT BECOMES of the Northwestern U. gridiron crew? I suspect this case will take so many years to work its way through the courts that none of the current players will be around, should the labor board’s ruling ultimately be upheld.

But perhaps there’s someone about 9 or 10 right now who doesn’t quite develop into a top player worthy of an SEC or Pac 10 school – or Michigan or Ohio State, either.

But as a result, he may get a bit more responsible treatment while taking the field at the former Dyche Stadium. And perhaps even some of those higher-skilled athletes also will gain some respect from their universities/employers as well.

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What if we're no closer to resolving 'gay marriage' by week's end than now?

There were those people who, while Illinois spent time this spring trying to figure out what to do with the issue of making marriage a legal option for gay couples, gave as their reason for wanting to wait the concept that we should see what the Supreme Court of the United States would do.

For the issue was among the cases that the nation’s high court heard this spring, and is expected to issue a ruling on some time later this week (maybe even as early as Tuesday).

BUT WHEN I learned of the court’s ruling Monday with regards to affirmative action, I couldn’t help but wonder if those people felt a little bit foolish for waiting.

Probably not! Many of those individuals have no factor for feeling shame. Many of them just want to delay the issue – perhaps out of some misguided belief that it will go away if they don’t think about it.

Now what do affirmative action and gay marriage have to do with each other?

It just seems that the high court was desperately trying to avoid doing something that would be seen as definitive in the case involving admissions policies at the University of Texas.

THE CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGUES who want to do away with policies that try to balance out the factors in our society that can hold back certain individuals from achieving their full potential would have loved it if the Supreme Court had upheld a lower court’s ruling that found flaws in the university’s policies.

Instead, the Supreme Court told that lower court to reconsider the way it reviewed the case. The Supreme Court seemed to imply there might be flaws in the lower court’s rejection.

It’s as though the Supreme Court doesn’t want to be the entity that strikes down attempts to restrict affirmative action policies. But they also don’t want to do anything that could be interpreted as giving “aid and comfort” to those policies as well.

Are we going to get another ruling later this week that manages to take the same attitude toward gay marriage?

IF I HAD to put money down on a bet, I’d be willing to say the answer is “Yes.”

Perhaps this case will wind up being thrown back to the individual states to resolve for themselves. Perhaps Illinoisans are going to have to figure out for ourselves what to do with this issue.

Which would mean that all that was accomplished with the failure to pass the bill in the Illinois House of Representatives this spring was that several more months of time were wasted.

And our state managed to lump itself for a few months in with the states of the Old Dixie that probably will take a certain amount of pride in being the final states of the Union to take up the issue.

ILLINOIS CERTAINLY ISN’T going to be at the forefront of this issue.

Now for those people who are going to start citing political strategy at me to defend the failure of the Illinois House to even vote on the bill, don’t bother. I get it.

Having some sort of vote just for the sake of putting people on the record as being opposed might have resulted in an overwhelming defeat that would have given the same “aid and comfort” to those ideologues and their personal hang-ups about our society.

At least this way, there’s still a bill pending in the Illinois House that already has Illinois Senate approval. The whole legislative process doesn’t have to start over.

I SHOULD STATE one thing here. I don’t know for a fact that the Supreme Court of the United States will take this same attitude toward gay marriage. Nobody knows what the high court will ever do until they literally do it.

Way too much of what passes for reporting about appeals courts borders on predictions that are about as legitimate as those funky people who read tarot cards at sleazy carnivals.

All I know for sure is that it is likely that those people who were expecting a definitive direction from the Supreme Court on this issue are likely to be among the disappointed by week’s end.

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