Just in case you missed the smattering of banners on archways, fliers on doors and ads in The Daily Cougar, Tuition and Fee Forums are coming up this week at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday and 12 p.m. Thursday in the University Center World Affairs Lounge. Each is expected to last about an hour and a half.
Both of these forums provide opportunities for students to learn about proposed student tuition and fees and ask questions of the University administrators who are proposing them. It’s a prime opportunity for students to make a statement about where the money they work so hard for goes.
Student turnout at the Student Fees Advisory Committee hearings earlier this month was, in a word, abysmal. Although the committee scheduled opportunities for public comment, those opportunities went un-seized. And although the coming Tuition and Fee Forums will address much larger sums than the $185 student service fee, attendance during the past several years has been sparse. It will continue to be so if the SFAC attendance rate is any indicator.
We at The Daily Cougar hear a lot of complaints about how this school spends its money and the problems students run into on a day-to-day basis, whether its frustration with PeopleSoft 8.9 or financial aid, bad cafeteria food or parking shortages. Not that we mind hearing your thoughts – they provide valuable input as to where we should focus our coverage.
These forums, however, are a chance for disgruntled and contented students alike to tell administrators what needs to change and what needs to stay the same about the University.
All The Daily Cougar can do is ask what they’re doing about it – you have a voice. You have power, but in order to claim that power, there must be solidarity. Student voices must speak out. Students must attend these forums and take advantage of one of the few times University decision-makers must listen.
If the meetings are bare, it won’t be the end of the world. Tuition and fees won’t double, no one will replace our professors with robots or make Sanskrit a required course.
It will be only one more lost opportunity, only one more year, preceded by many other years, when students simply let decisions be made for them without their input or consent.
And if you’re OK with that, don’t go to the forums. Quietly pay your tuition and fees next year and don’t wonder where the money’s going or if it could be spent better. After all, maybe students will care next year or the year after that.
But maybe it could start with you.
