DIE, ARNOLD, DIE

What a difference five years can make. I was 17 in 2003 when my mom covered part of our kitchen with pages from the LA Times filled with tiny pictures of the candidates for governor, each more preposterous than the last. What emerged from the chaos was perhaps the most absurd of all: the Governator. YEAH, I'M BITTER. One of the other candidates taped to our pantry doors that year was a college kid, some skinny white boy whose name I don't remember, and I'll tell you, if you had elected him, I'd be a hell of a lot better off.
Of course, on November 7, 2006, I was finally old enough to vote. I cast a ballot for some Democrat. I don't remember his name either, and I'm not sure if I even googled his position on...anything. I voted for the person I felt had the best shot at defeating Arnold.
Now, just over five years later, I'm back at the same school I attended in 2003. I'm in the perfect position to judge just how well Arnold has served us.
When I arrived at Pasadena City College in 2003, I was immediately impressed. You'd think that as an institution gets larger, it becomes harder to manage, but PCC proved that assumption wrong. With roughly 75 TIMES more students than the boarding school I attended, it was at least 1000 times more efficient.
Don't get me wrong: it's still efficient, which speaks volumes about the super-human intelligence of whoever is running the thing. But there's also a lot of desperation.
At every class I've attended in the last week, people start to congregate outside the classrooms more than half an hour in advance. People pack into the classrooms: 60 or 70 people in a room meant for 35. They sit at desks, lean on the walls, crouch in the aisles. Most of them will be turned away. And sure, part of this is due to the larger national issue of recession. People who have lost their jobs are choosing to go back to school, but the other half is that programs have faced huge budget cuts, 50% in some cases.
More students plus less money can't equal anything good. And all the 18 year old first-time college students inherit these problems even though they were NEVER old enough to vote against Arnold.