The news is out today that California’s two public undergraduate university systems will indeed be subjected to the large funding cuts that everyone knew were coming. Now we have numbers: $650 million will be cut from each system. More if tenuous revenue projections are wrong. The University of California has already warned of “inevitable” tuition fee increases.

It’s probably because the news is so unsurprising, but my spontaneous reaction is outrage at the linguistic framing of the event in this SacBee article, which begins:

Students at California’s public colleges and universities should brace for more tuition increases given the budget plan the Legislature is voting on today.

Emphasis added. I’m reminded of those Cold War disaster preparedness videos:

“Should brace for” is an active injunction. But bracing is the pinnacle of passivity, something one does when the events are totally outside influence, just as the children in ‘Duck and Cover’ brace for the bomb attack.

Fellow students, educators, and sympathetic comrades, the SacBee enjoins you, be active in your passivity!