The Board of Trustees has approved another campus-initiated tuition increase with hardly an utterance from the student body. If the UNC Board of Governors approves this increase, then students will be looking at $300 more on their fall bill. While the summer’s $750 increase was a rushed surprise from the University, this increase has been in the works for months and there has been plenty of time for the student body to voice its opinion. At this point, students need to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of saying the increase is a surprise and learn from it.
Both the University’s Tuition and Fee Committee and Student Government have been asking for input and trying to inform people about the possibility of an increase all semester. There were three town hall meetings where students could voice their opinions, concerns and ideas. Student Government tried to advertise and make students aware of them, but attendance was abysmal. The moment to point fingers at the officials who were formulating these plans was at these meetings where all the facts were laid out on the table.
Student attendance at these meetings and constant e-mail feedback about ideas and the process would have made University officials think harder about the considerations they were taking. And if they didn’t follow through with the suggestions or ignored them, the students would have had something to hold over their heads in the end. Now, the students have nothing to hold the University to. This is a lesson to take University open meetings seriously. Those town hall meetings may have appeared to be a facade, but if people had attended and provided feedback, they may have been proven wrong.
The main question upset students need to ask is “where is the University going to get the money, if not from the student body?” The tuition increase has already been approved by the University, but is still waiting approval from the UNC Board of Governors. At this point, students should contact the UNC Board of Governors or the chancellor, and urge them to send it back to the University for another round of input and town hall meetings.
To prevent this in the future, students need to empower themselves. The Technician received a letter to the editor in response to a previous staff editorial that scolded the student body for their lack of attendance at one of these tuition town hall meetings. The writer argued that the students’ voices don’t have any power and it would have been pointless to go. While this may or may not have been true, students are only making assumptions and giving the University the power to make their decisions for them.
