An advisory council recommended to increase tuition for new Ohio University freshmen in December.
Recently, an advisory council recommended increases in tuition, room and board for new Ohio University freshmen. Our Student Senate president, Gabby Bacha, was on this advisory council and voted in favor of the hikes, saying she believes “our quality of education will benefit.”
This is absolutely infuriating. If these cost hikes benefit students, they will only benefit those who have an inordinate amount of class privilege. For the rest of the student body, a recommended slash in the university’s ICA budget, as suggested by the Faculty Senate’s Finance and Facilities committee chair, would have been nice.
Our continued over-investment in ICA has been demonstrated to harm OU financially. But this is just one example — the point is that there are many ways the university could make its current spending more efficient without making education more inaccessible to low-income people and people of color.
The obvious question — if Gabby actually attended a single committee meeting and listened to opposing viewpoints — is why on earth she would vote yes on these proposed increases. Is she really in this to serve Ohio University's students, or just to advance her own careerist interest? Evidently, our Student Senate is not serving us. It’s selling us out.
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I would have anticipated that a bunch of admins in suits would vote to sell out OU’s students. But, however naively, I actually wouldn’t have expected our Student Senate president to do the same. Unfortunately, it makes sense though. The Student Senate has always been intended to function as a part of the university’s corrupt power structure, drawing in future CEOs and politicians to support the institution’s corporate agenda.
I am disappointed, to say the least.
Daniel Kington is a sophomore studying English and a former columnist for The Post.
