“Now I know I don’t know so many things, but I know what’s been going on. We’re only putting in a little to get rid of a lot that’s wrong. And if we had a nickel, for each time that we’ve been put on we’d all be the nickel man and we’d sing a nickel song.”
“Now I know I don’t know so many things, but I know what’s been going on. We’re only putting in a little to get rid of a lot that’s wrong. And if we had a nickel, for each time that we’ve been put on we’d all be the nickel man and we’d sing a nickel song.”
I usually wake up with a song stuck in my head. I like to think the songs pertain to my life or current disposition. Lately, Melanie Safka’s song, “Nickel Man,” has been stuck in my head because it is a song that accurately describes my feelings about the Board of Trustees voting on the new Guaranteed Tuition model, which will raise tuition by 5 percent for each incoming freshmen class. Safka’s lyrics go on to say, “they are only putting in a nickel, and they want a dollar song,” and in the case of Ohio University students, “they” means the members of the Board of Trustees. They are the ones who make important decisions about the university without thinking about the needs of students. The combined cost of tuition and room and board for the 2014-2015 school year was $22,068. Many of us need substantial scholarships, generous grants and lots of financial aid to afford such a ghastly cost. Otherwise, we are unable to attend the university and expand our knowledge, produce great art and become experts in the fields of biology, philosophy, English and others. Unfortunately, the Board of Trustees is raising the cost of tuition every year and not providing enough aid to the students who need it most (e.g., lower income families, minorities, first generation college students). “They” expect us to succeed, but they are not giving us the proper resources that we need to succeed. They are not giving students the freedom to live without debt, and they are not giving us an opportunity to voice our opinions and have confidence that our opinions will be considered legitimate (the Board of Trustees student representative does not get to vote). Yet, they want us to be the competent professors, doctors, artists, physical therapists, teachers, philosophers, psychologists, writers and engineers of the future. To not be able to attend the university because of cost or to be chained to large sums of debt is not a recipe for success. It is a recipe for dissatisfaction, unhappiness and failure. If you feel the burden of this unrealistic expectation, I invite you to join other like-minded students to protest the tuition increase that the Board of Trustees will be voting on Friday morning.
Madeleine Toerne is a student at Ohio University.
