Reexamining the Tuition Hike

While yesterday's announcement of the mid-year tuition increase of $300 for W&M undergraduates has made the Board of Visitors an unpopular bunch, perhaps we ought to stop, step back, and gain a little perspective, as graciously offered to us by the crisis in California.

Wow. 32% increase in tuition for all University of California campuses? Compared with the thousands of dollars these students have to come up with for next semester, $300 doesn't seem like much.

Still a kick in the shins, but not the kick in the cojones that the UC students are getting.

Fiat Lux? More like Fail at Lux.

Graph based on figures from CNN article & W&M Tuition & Fees,

and may or may not have been created on GraphJam.

(Am assuming that the UC & nationwide figures are also per semester.)

Financial Fail

Yesterday the students received an email from President Reveley to inform us of how financially screwed we are. I was surprised at the bluntness of his message, especially compared with his State of the University address last month, which remained romantic in the face of our hardships.

The attitude last month was "our trees are still pretty, our bricks are still old, we're fine."

Now? "Buckle down and help us dig spare change out of the couch."

Reveley offers us lots of scary numbers to drive home the reality of our financial plight, particularly all the money we're now not receiving from the State, and how many millions we're trying to make up for through canceled raises, elimination of vacant positions, etc. (To see the word "millions" so many times in a single paragraph is a little mind-boggling; I don't think any of us have really grasped how much money it takes to run a school, and how much we're losing.)

One of the tactics employed to come up with more cash is "increas[ing] slightly the size of the College’s incoming freshman class to generate additional tuition revenue" -- a seemingly obvious idea, but perhaps bordering on ridiculous, considering the housing situation on campus. (The housing pool last semester had to "bump" out 300+ students who sought on-campus housing.) Likewise the horrific on-campus parking for students, residential as well as commuter, which remains one of the most complaint-inciting problems for students. Increasing class sizes will just create more competition for on-campus housing and parking spaces, or does the administration hope to compensate some of the budget cuts through parking tickets?

The College has also finally been forced to resort to layoffs, which we'd thankfully avoided until now. Twelve staff members will be laid-off starting in January, adding another dozen people to the epidemic of unemployment in the country.

Increasing class size and reducing staff size (not yet faculty size, though we'll see how next year's budget solutions pan out) -- this sounds like a vicious cycle that could lead us somewhere very bad.

To top it all off, the Board of Visitors has approved a mid-year tuition increase of $300 for each undergraduate. When looking at $11,000 for in-state tuition and $21,000 out-of-state per semester, $300 doesn't seem like much, but when many families are struggling to pay for college as it is, major banks are getting stingier with loans, and, worse yet, some students have to make the decision not to attend college at all for financial reasons, that extra $300 is a real kick in the shins.

(And, speaking of tuition costs, check out Delegate David Albo's thankfully failed bill to change that in-state/out-of-state ratios if you really want a budget scare.)


None of these hard choices the College has had to make are pleasant, but what else can we do? With the way the economy is now -- well, things suck.

(i.e. SAVE US, OBAMA. You're nearly done on that health care stuff, right? Can you get back to education?)

Hamthrax at W&M

All right, TWAMPs. Swine Flu is a scary thing. After that email on Oct. 30 about how many cases we've had on campus (530 reported from Sept. 1 - Oct. 30), and how many cases we have on average at any given time (40-50 cases!), I was dousing myself in hand sanitizer any time someone sneezed.

So go get your H1N1 vaccine in the Sadler Center today. It's FREE for students. Can't argue with free and not getting the piggie flu (also, I got in and out of there within five minutes, which is pretty miraculous for any flu shot setup). I've got my little band-aid to prove I'm Swine Flu-Free. Go get yours!

Ow

Watched the Queen's Guard of W&M practice their rifle-spinning drills, looking so trained and badass. 'Til one of the guys hit himself in the shin. HUTF. Don't worry, guys. You still rock.

It's Galing, We're Harking

gale, n. 1. a. A wind of considerable strength [OED definition]

--

I've always thought "Hark Upon the Gale" was a curious motto. "When the wind blows, listen up." Seems like good advice. Along the same lines as Hogwarts's draco dormiens nunquam titillandus, "Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon." It's just good advice.

After three solid days of rain and gales, from Wednesday to Friday, my rainboots have finally dried out. The fringes of Hurricane Ida, I think? Whatever storm was going along the coast. I don't know what it is about Williamsburg, or what meteorological phenomenon that must surround it, but we seem to get an inordinate amount of rain here. If last week was any indication, our weather is positively diluvian. Williamsburg is the Seattle of Virginia.

With all the uneven brick of old campus, it makes for a patchwork of puddles, particularly after such Biblical rain. Upon my acceptance to the College, a friend informed me as we walked through old campus in the rain, "If you are a connoisseur of puddles, then William & Mary is for you." One must always be prepared to fall on one's ass when walking through old campus, combating the chaotic and unexpected rise and fall of ancient bricks; to have the additional level of difficulty that is water, it's just cruel.

Photo of TJ in Thursday's rain, courtesy of
the Office of University Relations (Twitter account: WMNews)

The gales of wind on Thursday morning were so tempestuous that all umbrellas brought into my morning class were broken, or at least severely tweaked. I'd never in real life seen an umbrella turn inside-out before, like in the cartoons, but the passion of a Williamsburg rainstorm was enough to best my cheap umbrella. The truly poor souls, however, were the students without umbrellas. Drenched, they squelched into every building, their soaked shoes leaving great imprints of misery upon the floor. To not own an umbrella seems an absurd concept to me, but the girl who sits next to me in the aforementioned broken-umbrella class claims that she was unaware of the dire need of an umbrella that arises from living here, because while it rains elsewhere, it rains here.

We came up with the following solution to this ignorance, so please take note of this, whomever puts together those "What to Bring to College" lists from the Admissions Office: on the very top of that list should be "an umbrella". Before computers and lava lamps and toothbrushes, an umbrella should be on that list. Applicants to the College should be adequately forewarned of the soggy future that awaits them at W&M. While beautiful, picturesque, and brimming with delightfully pretentious elitism, William & Mary is rainy. Hark, and come prepared for gales.

Is this thing on?

Testing. Testing. One, two, three.

All right. More to come later.