There is nothing quite like an impending financial crisis for administrators to prove their true feelings about students.
On Friday, Budget Planning Council voted to recommend raising room rates by 5 percent and board costs by 3 percent next school year to help cover funding cuts from the state.
Should President Roderick McDavis and the Board of Trustees rubber stamp this proposal, students who live in a double with air conditioning and have a weekly 20 Meal Plan will pay an additional $384 each year.
That means room and board for students in this arrangement increases from $9,408 each year to $9,792.
Coupled with the 3.5 percent tuition increase thrown on students this quarter, these are the latest - and most alarming - in a series of bureaucratic decisions shaking down students.
What our administrators conveniently forget, time and time again, is that students are struggling even more. The median income for an Ohio household has increased from $38,726 in 1998 to $48,011 in 2008, according to the U.S. census bureau. During that same period, the total tuition and general fees students paid increased from $4,530 a year to $8,907.
While the median household income grew 24 percent, the cost of an education skyrocketed 96.6 percent. How OU justifies gouging students who live in one of the 19 South Green dorms that hasn't been renovated since 1970 is beyond us.
Students would have voted down this proposal, but no one thought to ask them. Their voice on council is limited to Student Senate President Robert Leary, student trustee Chauncey Jackson and Graduate Student Senate President Tracy Kelly.
Leary said he and Jackson were the only two people on the 16-member board to vote against the hike. We'd love to verify this claim another way, but these meetings remain closed and the minutes are often posted weeks after the fact.
OU is at a critical point in its history. How it deals with the worst economic period since the Great Depression will define this university for years to come. If administrators continue placing the heavy burden on students' shoulders, they should not be surprised to see a very empty campus in the near future.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors.
4 Opinion
BPC recommends digging deeper into students
