President David Boren is scheduled to meet with students at 3 p.m. today in the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Beaird Lounge to discuss the potential tuition increases.
It is our hope students will pack the lounge ready to ask questions such as how much our tuition will increase to how these increases will be spent. So we would like to issue a challenge to students. We need to be prepared to ask Boren all the hard questions about tuition increases.
We believe the reason Boren is holding such an event is to break the bad news that tuition increases are coming. Whether it is in the next six months or in the next six years, tuition increases are coming to OU. It would be foolish to think otherwise. Increases are inevitable.
To further our belief tuition increases are bound to happen, earlier this semester The Daily reported Governor Mary Fallin proposed a 2 to 3 percent budget cut. If these cuts do end up happening it will affect OU.
In 1988, OU received 27.4 percent of the state fund allocations. This number has slowly decreased ever since. In 2007 — the last year the provost’s office has recorded on their fact book — OU received 23.9 percent of the state allocation fund. A potential budget cut would affect how much of a decrease we get next year.
Boren is unaware if there will be tuition increases, but we are highly skeptical, university spokesman Chris Schilling said. Why would someone hold a meeting to discuss “potential” tuition increases if they weren’t coming? We would be naive to believe tuition increases aren’t inevitable.
So what can we do to prepare for this news? We must ask all the hard questions, and in return we demand honest legitimate answers. We need to know:
• Why are tuition necessary?
• How much are these increases?
• Where is the extra money going?
• Why does the university need the extra money after taking 5 percent budget cuts.
• How will the administration prevent future increases?
We hope if students and attendees choose not to ask these questions then Boren will take it upon himself to respond to them. Remember, these increases not only affect us, but they will affect future generations of Sooners.
When discussing changes to OU, tuition is probably one of the most important issues. Lets prove our level of commitment to OU — not just how it is now, but in the future as well — and not take tuition increases lying down.
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1992alum 1 year ago
Hopefully some of the tuition increase will be used to hire better editors, layout staff, and/or proofreaders for the paper. These typos would be pathetic for a high school newspaper. Jack Catlin must be weeping over how far the Daily has fallen in terms of quality.