Opinion: 3.6% is not enough
Earlier this year, the university announced that tuition for the 2017-2018 academic year would be raised 3.6%, nearly reaching a $70,000 price tag. This announcement, while not unexpected, led many Northwestern students to express their anger and disapproval at the exorbitant increase in the price of attending school. This response is understandable, and I empathize with the members of our community who feel that this increase in tuition costs is simply too much. But I challenge that thought with my own: a 3.6% increase in tuition is simply not enough.
Look around you, Wildcats. Look at your surroundings. Do you see these all-glass buildings? Have you taken a minute to notice our top-grade landscaping? Or were you too busy lying on the massive pile of earth the school built into the lake?
This. Shit. Ain’t. Free.
You get what you pay for, and for seventy-thousand dollars, we get some pretty cool stuff, like breakfast for dinner during finals and performances from hot, popular artists like MGMT and T-Pain. And that stuff is great, really. But why not bump it up a notch and really get this ball rolling? Think of the extravaganza that would come with raising the tuition 50%. Just think about it. Oh-daddy, yes please.
I don’t want t-shirts given out during Wildcat Welcome, I want blazers and cufflinks. To hell with Dillo Day, I want a Dillo Week. And if we’re filling Lake Michigan with our own land, then let’s finish the goddamn fill. The sky’s the limit. And yes, so is a family’s income, but if you can’t pay you can’t play--in Six Flags, that is, since Northwestern would rent it out for the entire year with this new surplus of tuition dollar billz. Why invest $260 million dollars in a sports facility when we could just buy the Cubs? That’s all I’m saying.
“But that’s classist!” Awesome, it’ll really strengthen our brand then. Maybe if you paid more you’d stop complaining and start enjoying your yachting Norris mini-course. Sure, we’re paying crazy amounts of money without getting the resources we need as students. But if we paid more, we would have the resources we need to be GODS.
