On November 9th, my world about fell apart. That pain was only escalated when President Trump started announcing his cabinet. DeVos has been one of the more controversial picks of Trump’s, which prompted Senate Democrats to stay up all night holding the floor in opposition to her nomination. I thought surely they couldn’t go all night, but I woke up the next morning to see them still hard at work.

Many people would see their obstruction of the nomination process as petty and call them sore losers, but I find it admirable. I thank them for their hard work for one simple reason: DeVos as Secretary of Education will be a disaster for the public school system.

To begin, DeVos is a strong supporter of private school vouchers. This means that families can get money from the state in order to send their children to private schools. This money is more often than not taken out of public education money, provided by tax payers. Families may want to send their kids to private schools for religious reasons or because they believe a private education is better. However, in regard to religion, it is not the responsibility on the average tax payer to fund individual religious beliefs.

Continuously, if we properly funded our public school system there would not be debates, or concerns, over the quality of public education. The families who take advantage of the voucher program are often not the ones whom this program is intended to help. Additionally, it creates divisions in communities. In order to better our communities and economies we absolutely must start investing in public education, students, and teachers.

Further, DeVos is not very progressive on gun control. After the many tragic shootings in schools around the country, I, personally want a Secretary of Education who is going to fight for gun control reform in this country.  I know I won’t always get what I want, but DeVos claimed that schools might need guns to protect the students from a grizzly attack.

If you check out the data you are more likely to die from being attacked by a dog or a bee, than a bear (conservationnw.org).  In fact, it was reported that you have a 1 in 2.1 million chance of being attacked by a bear in Yellowstone National Park (nps.gov). That could have been a genuine concern on the prairie in the old days, but I think it is more important that we protect our students from domestic terrorists at this time, and no, I don’t mean Muslims.

Finally, I find it incredibly unsettling how much money DeVos and her family donated to the Republican Party and now she has a cabinet position. Call me crazy, but I think there is a serious problem with our democracy when cabinet positions start being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

So, thank you to the Senate Democrats. Thank you for staying up all night. Thank you for voting “No” to Betsy DeVos.