Antagonism towards the University’s Board of Trustees among a growing contingent of students is boiling over. The campus’s leftist umbrella organization, Save the Pass, which was responsible for the Fight the Fee protests, is planning a protest called “Welcome the Trustees” next Thursday on Ho Plaza.
The protest leader, Daniel Marshall ’15, penned an op-ed titled “Who Can Trust the Trustees?” in the Cornell Daily Sun last week explaining much of his opposition to the Board of Trustees. He censured the University and Board for apparent conflicts of interest between them regarding financial transactions, as well as general financial mismanagement on the part of the University.
On Cornell Radio’s show “Big Red Banter” aired today, Marshall was a guest but was reluctant to divulge more details about the upcoming protest, other than saying it was about “articulating the threat” to the Board of Trustees.
It wasn’t apparent what the “threat” is or will be, but hopefully the protest organizers are planning this one seriously. Over the past year, protests at Cornell have been serious let-downs. The takeover of Day Hall last month, for example, was little more than an exercise in self-congratulations followed by a 30-on-1 temper tantrum aimed at President Skorton.
The protest organizers’ demands are listed in the photo above and explained more in depth below. Both are taken from the Facebook event.
“Undergraduates! Graduate Students! Faculty! Workers! Community Members!
As the Trustees deliberate in their boardrooms, we will assemble on Ho Plaza for an unprecedented campus-wide protest to make our demands not only heard but addressed. We’re done counting on student representatives to fix our problems for us. Everyone knows there is something wrong. The question is: what are we going to do about it?
We need everyone.
Ho Plaza. 1PM. Thursday, March 26
DEMANDS
1) Repeal the Health Fee
2) Eliminate Trustee Conflicts of Interest
3) a) Freeze Tuition b) Re-institute No-loans Financial Aid
4) Do Not Divert Funding From Students, Workers, or Faculty to Meet These Demands
1) The Health Fee was undemocratically implemented, without serious consultation or consent from the undergraduate or graduate student body. It comes at a high cost to students, especially since it is not covered by financial aid. Because over half of it is going to pay back debt incurred by mismanagement, it is simply paying for University debt with student debt.
2) The trustees routinely do business, in Cornell’s name, with companies with which they have direct affiliations. The Board of Trustees itself reserves the right to determine what constitutes a conflict of interest. When Trustees took out a $285 million capital projects loan in the wake of the financial crisis, and employed their own company, they directly benefited while students were burdened with ever-increasing costs and debt.
3) Tuition rose every year in the last four decades faster than the rate of inflation, and it will continue to do so, unless we take a stand. The Administration has not indicated that there is a ceiling to tuition increases; on the contrary, President Skorton pointed out in his presentation that it must continue to rise in order for Cornell to continue to have access to cheap credit. In 2012, Cornell began to roll back financial aid by instituting loans for low-income students. We are asking that they reinstate no-loans packages for students who can least afford to take on debt.
4) In the past, the Administration has attempted to pit students and workers’ interests against each other. The budget shouldn’t be balanced by ever-increasing costs for students, laying off maintenance workers and cutting worker benefits; it should be balanced so that student costs decline, and workers are compensated justly.”
Unlike the Federal government, Cornell cannot print money. So how does Mr. Marshall propose to provide everything to everybody, as his DEMANDS demand, particularly #4? Answer: selectively increase tuition for students from “wealthy” families, no doubt.
I can’t respond to the specifics of this since I don’t know the Cornell endowment situation, etc. But this does point to the fact that students and their parents need a truth-in-expenses information. For example, when my son went to an unnamed university (It had a name, just not saying it) he received a lot of aid the first couple years, then it slowly dried up. You see, once you are in a program they figure you can’t leave to go elsewhere. You have invested so much already that you will have to grin and bear it.
College should be seen as a contractual investment. If they want your business for 4 years you should have an UPFRONT decision on financial aid, costs, etc. covering all four years. Then you could make a reasonable decision on what the costs will be. Costs should not go up or down.
I can see why kids and their parents would be upset at rising costs. I know I was.
I agree with josephurban. When I attended college (1980-1984), my first year tuition (excluding dormitory, meal plan, books, etc.) was $4500. My fourth year tuition was $8700, a nearly 100% increase. My paltry scholarship remained the same each year, however the university was more than happy to loan me the ever-increasing differential, which allowed me to continue.
This was almost a deceptive business practice, along the lines of DirecTV:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/03/ftc-charges-directv-deceptively-advertising-cost-its-satellite
Well, maybe not deceptive, but definitely predatory.
At colleges throughout America, this still goes on. But don’t anyone worry, President Elizabeth Warren will fix all that.