Fifty-four-year-old Kamalla Rose Kaur, a creative writing major at Western, posed an onslaught of thought-provoking questions to the Western community in her July 1, 2009 short essay "Rolling Rolling In Their Graves - What happened to WWU?". 

In her essay, originally published by the Northwest Citizen blog, Kaur remembers the patriarchs of Western, relives her childhood memories on the old campus and questions the reasons for Western's apparent shift in vision, mission and dedication to Bellingham's distinct community culture.
The Western Front sat down with Kaur to uncover the answers to many of the questions she posed in her short essay.

The Western Front: In your piece you ask, “But when did Western Washington University become like everywhere else? Since when did they start hiring so many professors and administrators from other places, who fail to understand that it is important to become Pacific Northwesterners if you live here in the Pacific Northwest? When did Western lose touch with so much of its vision and mission?"

What non-Pacific Northwest qualities do contemporary professors and administrators possess?

Kamalla Rose Kaur: Not passing the 'are you up on Bellingham issues test.' Overworked. Not fighting hard enough to keep our class sizes half of what they are sors who were able to go down to Olympia and really sell Olympia on our uniqueness, and in a good way. And these were not radicals—it was before the hippies. These were the patriarchs of Western. So what changed in Olympia? I’m sure Olympia has something to do with this.

Q: Why do you feel becoming true Pacific Northwesterners is so vital for the Western community?

A: Why does it matter what I think? Why don’t we talk to the cedar trees, the whales, the critters that live here? Why don’t we wonder what it’s going to be like when you’re saying 'just because we don’t have trees any more, and just because we have condos looking back at us, that doesn’t mean it’s a worse world.' Yes, it does. It means it’s a worse world. And Pacific Northwesterners live here because we like it here. Because we love it.

Q: In your piece you ask, “when did Western get so caste stratified?”
What characteristics have tipped you off to the stratification of Western and Bellingham?

A: You don’t want to serve [Western's] president on paper plates. Now, if you’re not serving paper plates because they’re bad for the environment, that’s one thing, but if you have paper plates when the president walks in, and you need to come up with china, that’s another thing. Am I wrong in that? How do I know that? I’m not telling you.

Q: In your piece you write, “Trust me, those young professors would have taken a bullet for the cause of liberal arts education.”
How has Western drifted further from offering a traditional liberal arts education?

A: The departments don’t talk to each other, and it’s all structured like all universities elsewhere, which are often glorified vocational schools. And I’m not looking down on that, because I know that we all need jobs and we need to be able to survive. But, we will see how far Western has deviated from that when we see how well Western graduates do when they graduate in their specialties.

Q: In your view, what has threatened the continued existence of such an education at Western?

A: Money, money, money, money, money. There’s always the question of whether you can give people a really, really good education and teach them how to learn, make them reading addicts, make them love science and art at the same time.

A good percentage of students are on full rides financially. They don’t get their financial aid until a day after the quarter starts. That means those students are behind, they can’t buy books. They don’t give them a lot to live on. By the end of the quarter, most people are struggling.

Also, most finals are at the first week of the month at the end of the quarter. People who are poor and are going to Western not only don’t have the groovy shoes, but they have to come up with rent money while going through finals.

Add to that, they might be having to go to the food bank. They might have a kid. Western doesn’t even take food stamps. You better be able to pack a lunch, or else you are going to be spending money on food at airport prices.

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