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Thursday, June 28, 2012

UBCLEAR Press Conference Statement

Adam Drury, doctoral candidate in English at UB, organizer for New York Students

Rising (NYSR)

Student loan debt in the United States stands at over 1 trillion dollars today. Tuition

at the University at Buffalo is set to increase 30% over the next five years. Studentshere are therefore asking, along with their peers nationwide, a question whose

answer should be simple: Is the value of a college degree worth its soaring cost?

If we answer yes to this question, we expect to receive the greatest possible

value for the degrees we pay for, and this means we must both know what our

tuition money supports and have a say in the funding decisions that shape the

opportunities available to us.

Because they have failed to be fully transparent to the people of New York, andbecause they have not held themselves accountable to students and to the faculty

who educate them, the actions of SUNY, of the University at Buffalo and Dean Bruce

Pittman, and of the Shale Resources in Society Institute directed by John Martin,

have fundamentally and irrevocably compromised the value of a degree from

SUNY Buffalo.

They have also devalued the degree by trampling over the values of the degree,

values of academic integrity, scholarly ethics, open and honest inquiry, the

principles of which are taught to us as soon as we enter the university as thefoundation for our studies in all fields.

Students do not want to attend a University whose leaders demonstrate such callous

disrespect for the values they are tasked to uphold. We are outraged by the

frivolousness with which those values are repeatedly discarded because they

challenge the prerogatives of corporate profiteering. We are disgusted by the

servility of our university leaders to that profiteering. WE DEMAND INTEGRITY!

The Shale Resources in Society Institute stands as an emblem of this disrespect,

frivolousness, and servility. The Institute is anathema to the integrity of ourUniversity at Buffalo.

Students seek higher education because we recognize the importance of

developing the knowledge and skills needed to confront the political, economic,

cultural, and environmental crises prepared for us by our governments and

corporations.

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Thursday, June 28, 2012

How can we trust the University at Buffalo to provide us with the resources and

guidance to do so when it itself refuses to lead the way ethically and responsibly,

when it itself installs an institute that not only devalues the degree by refusing to be

accountable to the community and by making a mockery of its core principles, butthat does so for the purpose of selling academic legitimacy to a hydrofracking gas

industry responsible for wreaking permanent and catastrophic damage to the

natural and public resources of the State of New York?

The SRSI betrays the Mission Statement of the University at Buffalo along with its

obligations to the community and the public good. It has squandered our trust and

the publics trust and has shamelessly jeopardized the future of our environment.

The SRSI is an embarrassment to the students of the University at Buffalo.