A Rumination
A fellow Hofstra junior recently received her tuition statement in her campus mailbox. It read:
Dear Student,
We are pleased to inform you that your federal loan has been approved for the fall 2008 semester. Current Term Credits: $17,833.25.
Enjoy the semester!
Hofstra University Office of Financial Aid
She laughed bitterly as she showed it to me. What I saw was:
Dear Sucker,
Have your parents checked their bank accounts lately? We’ve totally cleaned them out! As for you, you’re going to be paying this shit off until you’re 60.
Fuck you!
Hofstra University Office of Financial Aid
College tuition, we’re told endlessly, is an investment in our future. Still, it’s hard to escape the fact that $37,000 is a bit much for a few hours a week with some underpaid professors, a tiny bedroom, and food that makes my stomach want to punch me in the mouth. Where does the rest of the money go?
It’s well known that Stuart Rabinowitz, president of Hofstra, is among the highest paid university presidents in the country. No one knows what he does with the $500,000 the school pays him each year. Plates his toilet seat with gold? Resurfaces the kitchen floor of his Aspen chalet with platinum? It’s unsatisfying to dwell on the possibilities. Short of orchestrating a liberation of his campus residence, which is also paid for by the students, there’s little that can be done about the proportion of my future that pads his retirement account.
Instead, I have focused my frustration on the shrubbery. Hofstra’s campus is an arboretum, home to 12,000 trees of 625 species and varieties. Some are so valuable and delicate that students are fined if they touch them. As I walk by $200,000 tree after $200,000 tree on the way to my work-study job, I devote myself to rage and vicious schemes. According to Hofstra’s website, “Hofstra’s 240 acres provide a beautiful campus setting that inspires and motivates its students.” I’d prefer to be able to move out of my parent’s basement sometime in the next four decades. So, for you readers at Vassar, Oberlin, UC Davis, and Connecticut College, readers who trundle through exquisite arboreta as your debt mounts, a modest proposal: dig up those Japanese cherries, those Himalayan pines, those Oriental spruces, cart them down to the local garden shop, and recoup what you can.
