Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.
Posted on 10/12/2009 12:22:50 PM PDT by rrstar96
The University of Puerto Rico system will be shuttered all week due to the planned general strike by island labor unions scheduled for Thursday to protest the dismissal of more than 16,000 government workers.
Interim UPR President Miguel A. Muñoz declared an academic and administrative recess at all 11 campuses system-wide, with the exception of the Medical Sciences Campus, where steps were being taken to ensure services to patients.
“The safety of all the students and the university community in general is and should be our biggest priority. We can’t permit elements from outside the university system to undermine the democratic principles of free expression and association that the UPR has always promoted,” Muñoz said.
Students have shut down several UPR campuses with strikes since the Fortuño administration announced late last month that more than 16,000 public workers would be laid off as the government works to close a $3.2 billion budget deficit. The administration is aiming at cutting spending by $2 billion a year, a move it says is needed to protect Puerto Rico’s credit from a downgrade to “junk” status. The flagship Río Piedras campus has been idled at least three times in about a month for various protests on the layoffs and other labor issues.
“The proponents of these demonstrations have expressed their intention to continue this week in their quest to violate the health[y] academic environment that should rein at the UPR,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz recognized the right of members of the university community to express themselves, but said the right to freedom of expression of some groups should not impinge on the rights of others to continue to studying and working.
“We hope that this academic and administrative recess contributes to calm things down to allow the university community to think calmly and constructively about the problems facing Puerto Rico and the solutions that can the university academic community can help articulate,” Muñoz said.
A group of UPR students blocked traffic along Ponce de León Avenue in Río Piedras to protest the recess, allowing only public buses to get through.
“They have violated our rights of freedom of expression because we have a previously convened student assembly scheduled for tomorrow,” said Amaris Torres, of the Law School Student Action Committee.
Torres said the assembly would be held Tuesday in the middle of Ponce de León Avenue and did not discard blocking traffic for the rest of the week.
ping
I can’t help wondering what you could learn at the U of PR anyway.
Damn - a politician that GETS IT!
I learned Civil Engineering and became a US Air Force officer...
Interesting the layoffs aren’t causing the schools to be idled, but the protests are. Those still on the universities payroll get a paid vacation, students get less education. Kudos to the elected officials who get that they can’t spend more than they have. U.S. taxpayers subsidize Puerto Rico to the tune of about $20 billion a year. PR residents don’t pay US income tax, although they pay other federal taxes.
Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.
Actually, this article was in English, straight out of the Caribbean Business website. Similar reports in the Spanish-language dailies were written by the Associated Press, which FreeRepublic requires to be excerpted. It would have been useless to translate an AP article only to be able to post a portion of it.
I graduated with science degrees from two of the UPR's campuses and believe the education I received from both was very good. In addition, the UPR system is fully accredited nationally, so we're not talking a Third World diploma mill here.
Another thing is to find a decent job in the island after graduation, hence the never-ending "brain drain".
A Colegio alumnus, I gather.
I’m also a UPR graduate. Rio Piedras.
A country fights for the non-producers, sounds like ZerO to me.
¡Gallitos, fua!
You mean that minor school in San Juan that spends more time dealing with protests from radicals than actually teaching?
Never heard of it!
[Plena music] Por ahi viene El Colegio, con sus cuatro vagones, unos llenos de... :-)
“ese tufo llegaraaaaaa
a la torre de la Universidad
y la tumbara y la tumbara...”
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